In De libero arbitrio 3. After all these options come to the fore again Letters Augustine discards none of them officially except for the notion, wrongly associated with Origenism, which was considered a heresy at the time, that incorporation was a punishment for a sin committed by the pre-existent soul De civitate dei In practice, he narrows the debate down to the alternative between creationism and traducianism, which appear to have been the only options taken seriously by his Christian contemporaries.
Augustine deploys what we may call his philosophy of the mind most fully in his great work on Nicene Trinitarian theology, De trinitate. Having removed apparent Scriptural obstacles to the equality and consubstantiality of the three divine persons bks. The basis for this move is, of course, Genesis — Augustine follows a long-standing Jewish and Patristic tradition, familiar to him from Ambrose, according to which the biblical qualification of the human being as an image of God referred not to the living body a literalist reading vulnerable to the Manichean charge of anthropomorphism, cf.
Confessiones 6. The general pattern of his argument is the Augustinian ascent from the external to the internal and from the senses to God; but since human reason is, whether by nature or due to its fallen state, hardly capable of knowing God, Augustine this time is obliged to interrupt and re-start the ascent several times. The final book shows that the exercise of analyzing the human mind does have preparatory value for our thinking about the Trinity but does not yield insight into the divine by being simply transferred to it De trinitate The last element ensures the active character of perception and intellection but also gives weight to the idea that we do not cognize an object unless we consciously direct our attention to it MacDonald b.
Augustine begins by arguing in a manner reminiscent of his cogito-like argument; see 5. This pre-reflexive self-awareness is presupposed by every act of conscious cognition. As the mind in its fallen state is deeply immersed in sensible reality, it tends to forget what it really is and what it knows it is and confounds itself with the things it attaches the greatest importance to, i.
The result are materialist theories about the soul, which thus derive from flawed morality De trinitate If it follows the Delphic command, however, the mind will realize that it knows with certainty that it exists, thinks, wills etc. And as the substance or essence of the mind cannot be anything other than what it knows with certainty about itself, it follows that nothing material is essential to the mind and that its essence must be sought in its mental acts ib. Again, the ethical side of the theory should not be overlooked.
As a strong voluntary element is present in and necessary for an act of cognition, what objects imaginations, thoughts we cognize is morally relevant and indicative of our loves and desires.
And while the triadic structure of the mind is its very essence and hence inalienable, Augustine insists that the mind is created in the image of God, not because it is capable of self-knowledge, but because it has the potential to become wise, i. He takes it as axiomatic that happiness is the ultimate goal pursued by all human beings e. Confessiones Wetzel , 42— This structure Augustine inscribes into his Neoplatonically inspired three-tiered ontological hierarchy Letter The Supreme Being is also the greatest good; the desire of created being for happiness can only be satisfied by the creator.
If we turn away from him and direct our attention and love to the bodies—which are not per se bad, as in Manicheism, but an infinitely lesser good than God—or to ourselves, who are a great good but still subordinate to God, we become miserable, foolish and wicked Letter Just as after the Fall all human beings are inevitably tainted by sin, we need to be purified through faith in order to live well and to restore our ability to know and love God De diversis quaestionibus We love absolutely only what we enjoy, whereas our love for things we use is relative and even instrumental De doctrina christiana 1.
The only proper object of enjoyment is God cf. Wickedness and confusion of the moral order results from a reversal of use and enjoyment, when we want to enjoy what we ought to use all created things, e. An obvious problem of this system is the categorization of the biblically prescribed love of the neighbor. Are we to enjoy our neighbor or to use her? The problem is inherited from ancient eudaimonism, where it takes some philosophical effort to reconcile the intuition that concern for others is morally relevant with the assumption that ethics is primarily about the virtue and happiness of the individual.
Augustine is aware of the problem and gives a differentiated answer. In De doctrina christiana 1. Love of the neighbor thus means to desire his true happiness in the same way as we desire our own. Confessiones 4. In principle Augustine follows the view of the ancient eudaimonists that virtue is sufficient or at least relevant for happiness. There are however several important modifications. True virtue guarantees true happiness, but there is no true virtue that is not a gift of grace.
The perfect inner tranquility virtue strives for will only be achieved in the afterlife. Virtue is an inner disposition or motivational habit that enables us to perform every action we perform out of right love. There are several catalogues of the traditional four cardinal virtues prudence, justice, courage and temperance that redefine these as varieties of the love of God either in this life or in the eschaton De moribus 1.
This does not mean that virtue becomes non-rational for Augustine love and will are essential features of the rational mind; see 6. The criterion of true virtue is that it is oriented toward God.
Even if Augustine occasionally talks as if the four cardinal virtues could be added to the Pauline or theological virtues of love, faith and hope to make a sum of seven Letter A. These modifications have several interesting consequences. Even though Augustine postpones the happiness that is the reward of virtue to the afterlife, he does not make virtue a means to an end in the sense that virtue becomes superfluous when happiness is reached. To the contrary, he insists that virtue will persist in the eschaton where it will be transformed into eternal unimpeded fruition of God and of the neighbor in God.
Then it will indeed be its own reward and identical with happiness Letter Both eschatological virtue and virtue in this life are thus love of God; they only differ in that the latter is subject to hindrances and temptation. For this reason, those who have true love of God—e. When analyzing virtue in this life, Augustine takes up the Stoic distinction, familiar to him from Cicero De officiis 1.
Augustine therefore distinguishes between true i. Among other things, this distinction underpins his solution of the so-called problem of pagan virtue Harding ; Tornau b; Dodaro a: 27—71; Rist — because it permits ascribing virtue in a meaningful sense to pagan and pre-Christian paradigms of virtue like Socrates without having to admit that they were eligible for salvation. From this point of view, Socrates is closer to Paul than to Nero, even though his virtue will not bring him happiness, i.
It is closely related to virtue and often used synonymously with will e. De civitate dei As in the Symposium and in Plotinus Enneads I. In a more general way, love means the overall direction of our will positively toward God or negatively toward ourselves or corporeal creature De civitate dei The former is called love in a good sense caritas , the latter cupidity or concupiscence cupiditas , i.
The root of sin is excessive self-love that wants to put the self in the position of God and is equivalent with pride De civitate dei In his earlier work, Augustine has some difficulties incorporating love of neighbor into the Platonic and eudaimonist framework of his thinking De doctrina christiana 1.
After , in the context of his reflections on the Trinity and his exegesis of the First Epistle of John esp. In loving our neighbors, we of necessity love that love which enables us to do so itself, which is none other than God; love of God and love of neighbor are, accordingly, co-extensive and, ultimately, identical De trinitate 8.
He keenly insists that each and every action, even if it is externally good and impressive, can be motivated either by a good or an evil intention, by right or perverse love, by charity or pride. This goes for the actions prescribed by the Sermon of the Mount and even for martyrdom In epistulam Iohannis tractatus decem 8. It is therefore impossible to give casuistic rules for external moral behavior.
In a sense, his ideal agent is a successor of the Stoic and Neoplatonic sage, who always acts out of inner virtue or perfect rationality the latter Augustine replaces with true love but adapts his outward actions to the external circumstances cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos On the one hand, this limits the authority of other people—including those endowed with worldly power or an ecclesiastical office—to pass moral judgments.
Augustine repeatedly recommends withholding judgment so as to preserve humility De civitate dei 1. On the other hand, Augustine makes our inner motivational and moral life opaque even to ourselves and fully transparent only to God Confessiones We can never be fully sure about the purity of our intentions, and even if we were, we could not be sure that we will persist in them. All human beings are therefore called to constantly scrutinize the moral status of their inner selves in a prayerful dialogue with God as it is dramatized in the Confessiones.
Such self-scrutiny may well be self-tormenting; the obsession of Western Christianity with inner latent guilt here has its Augustinian roots. Catholic bishops are therefore obliged to compel heretics and schismatics to re-enter the Catholic church even forcibly, just as a father beats his children when he sees them playing with snakes or as we bind a madman who otherwise would fling himself down a precipice Letter Obviously, this is a paternalistic argument that presupposes superior insight in those who legitimately wield coercive power.
And as even the Church in this world is a mixed body of sinners and saints see 8. History and Political Philosophy , it may be asked how individual bishops can be sure of their good intentions when they use religious force Rist — Augustine does not address this problem, presumably because most of his relevant texts are propagandistic defenses of coercion against the Donatists.
Though other Latin philosophers, especially Seneca, had made use of the concept of will voluntas before Augustine, it has a much wider application in his ethics and moral psychology than in any predecessor and covers a broader range of phenomena than either Aristotelian boulesis roughly, rational choice or Stoic prohairesis roughly, the fundamental decision to lead a good life.
Augustine comes closer than any earlier philosopher to positing will as a faculty of choice that is reducible neither to reason nor to non-rational desire. Augustine admits both first-order and second-order volitions, the latter being acts of the liberum voluntatis arbitrium , the ability to choose between conflicting first-order volitions Stump ; Horn ; den Bok Like desires, first-order volitions are intentional or object-directed and operate on all levels of the soul.
Like memory and thought, will is a constitutive element of the mind see 6. It is closely related to love and, accordingly, the locus of moral evaluation. We act well or badly if and only if our actions spring from a good or evil will, which is equivalent to saying that they are motivated by right i. With this basic idea in view, Augustine defends the passions or emotions against their Stoic condemnation as malfunctions of rational judgment by redefining them more neutrally as volitions voluntates that may be good or bad depending on their intentional objects De civitate dei 9.
As in Stoicism, the will to act is triggered by an impression generated by an external object visum. To this the mind responds with an appetitive motion that urges us to pursue or to avoid the object e. But only when we give our inner consent to this impulse or withhold it, does a will emerge that, circumstances permitting, results in a corresponding action.
The will is the proper locus of our moral responsibility because it is neither in our power whether an object presents itself to our senses or intellect nor whether we take delight in it De libero arbitrio 3. The only element that is in our power is our will or inner consent, for which we are therefore fully responsible. Thus, a person who has consented to adultery is guilty even if his attempt actually to commit it is unsuccessful, and a victim of rape who does not consent to the deed keeps her will free of sin even if she feels physical pleasure De civitate dei 1.
Temptations of this kind are, in Augustine, not personal sins but due to original sin, and they haunt even the saints. Our will must be freed by divine grace to resist them Contra Iulianum 6. In the s, opposing the dualistic fatalism of the Manicheans, he uses the cogito-like argument see 5. Harrison A contemporaneous definition of will as a movement of soul toward some object of desire emphasizes the absence of external constraint, and the ensuing definition of sin as an unjust volition see above seems to endorse the principle of alternative possibilities De duabus animabus 14— In De libero arbitrio , free will appears as the condition of possibility of moral goodness and hence as a great good itself; but as it is not an absolute good which is God alone but only an intermediate one, it is liable to misuse and, hence, also the source of moral evil De libero arbitrio 2.
With all this, Augustine is basically in harmony with the traditional view of early Christian theology and exegesis, which is still adopted in the s by Julian of Aeclanum when he blames Augustine for having fallen back into Manichean fatalism and quotes his early definitions against him Julian, Ad Florum , in Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1.
Things change with Ad Simplicianum 1. The optimistic-sounding claim in the first book of De libero arbitrio 1. But he never questions the principle that we have been created with the natural ability to freely and voluntarily choose the good, nor does he ever deny the applicability of the cogito argument to the will cf. De civitate dei 5. What grace does is to restore our natural freedom; it does not compel us to act against our will.
What this means is best illustrated by the narrative of Confessiones 8 for particularly lucid interpretations, see Wetzel —; J. Though he identifies with the former, better will rather than with the latter that actually torments him, he is unable to opt for it because of his bad habits, which he once acquired voluntarily but which have by now transformed into a kind of addictive necessity ib. Using medical metaphors reminiscent of Hellenistic moral philosophy, he argues that his will lacked the power of free choice because the disease of being divided between conflicting volitions had weakened it ib.
Before, when he had just continued his habitual way of life, this had been a non-choice rather than a choice, even though, as Augustine insists, he had done so voluntarily. In substance, this remained his line of defense when, in the Pelagian controversy, he was confronted with the charge that his doctrine of grace abolished free will De spiritu et littera 52—60; cf.
De correptione et gratia 6. While the Pelagians thought that the principle of alternative possibilities was indispensable for human responsibility and divine justice, Augustine accepts that principle only for the first humans in paradise Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 1. In a way, by choosing wrongly Adam and Eve have abandoned free will both for themselves and for all humankind.
Original sin transformed our initial ability not to sin into an inability not to sin; grace can restore ability not to sin in this life and will transform it into inability to sin in the next De civitate dei The problem of the origin of evil unde malum , he claims, had haunted him from his youth Confessiones 7.
At first, he accepted the dualist solution of the Manicheans, which freed God from the responsibility for evil but compromised his omnipotence ib. After having encountered the books of the Platonists, Augustine rejected the existence of an evil substance and endorsed the Neoplatonic view argued e. In his mature view, which was largely developed during his anti-Manichean polemics, everything that has being is good insofar as it has been created by God.
There are of course different degrees of goodness as well as of being Letter Creation and Time. A created being can be said to be evil if and only if it falls short of its natural goodness by being corrupted or vitiated; strictly speaking, only corruption itself is evil, whereas the nature or substance or essence for the equivalence of the terms see De moribus 2. While this theory can explain physical evil relatively easily either as a necessary feature of hierarchically ordered corporeal reality De ordine 2.
Augustine answers by equating moral evil with evil will and claims that the seemingly natural question of what causes evil will is unanswerable. His most sustained argument to this effect is found in his explanation of the fall of the devil and the evil angels, a case that, being the very first occurrence of evil in the created world, allows him to analyze the problem in its most abstract terms De civitate dei The cause can neither be a substance which, qua substance, is good and unable to cause anything evil nor a will which would in turn have to be an evil will in need of explanation.
The fact that evil agents are created from nothing and hence are not, unlike God, intrinsically unable to sin is a necessary condition of evil but not a sufficient one after all the good angels successfully kept their good will.
In this context Augustine, in an interesting thought experiment, imagines two persons of equal intellectual and emotional disposition of whom one gives in to a temptation while the other resists it; from this he concludes that the difference must be due to a free, spontaneous and irreducible choice of the will De civitate dei Here at least Augustine virtually posits the will as an independent mental faculty.
As he points out himself, his conviction that human beings in their present condition are unable to do or even to will the good by their own efforts is his most fundamental disagreement with ancient, especially Stoic, virtue ethics De civitate dei After and because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, we have lost our natural ability of self-determination, which can only be repaired and restored by the divine grace that has manifested itself in the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ and works inwardly to free our will from its enslavement to sin.
Augustine emphasizes the necessity of grace for both intellectual understanding and moral purification already in his earliest works cf. Soliloquia 1. This explanation is explicitly rejected in Ad Simplicianum 1. The guiding intention of Romans 9, Augustine now says, is to preclude vainglory and pride ib. Free will has nothing to do with the reception of that gift because nobody can will to receive a divine call to faith nor to respond positively to it so as to act accordingly and perform good works out of love Ad Simplicianum 1.
While gratuitous election is, apart from being consoling, comparatively easily squared with the axioms of divine benevolence, justice and omnipotence, its corollary, the equally gratuitous reprobation and damnation of Esau, is a serious philosophical problem ib.
Romans The notion of original sin was not invented by Augustine but had a tradition in African Christianity, especially in Tertullian. The view that original sin is a personally imputable guilt that justifies eternal damnation is, however, new with Ad Simplicianum and follows with logical necessity from the exegetical and philosophical claims made there about divine grace and election Flasch ; contrast De libero arbitrio 3.
The theory of Ad Simplicianum is illustrated, with great philosophical acumen and psychological plausibility, in the Confessiones especially bk. After , pressed by his Pelagian opponents, Augustine paid increasing attention to the mechanics of the transmission of original sin. The result was a quasi-biological theory that associated original sin closely with sexual concupiscence see 9.
This knowledge is however hidden to human beings, to whom it will only be revealed at the end of times De correptione et gratia Until then, nobody, not even a baptized Christian, can be sure whether grace has given her true faith and a good will and, if so, whether she will persevere in it till the end of her life so as to be actually saved De correptione et gratia 10—25; cf.
While in Hellenism this had largely been a theoretical issue, it acquired practical relevance under the circumstances of monastic life: some North African monks objected to being rebuked for their misbehavior with the argument that they were not responsible for not yet enjoying the gift of divine grace De correptione et gratia 6.
Taking up ideas from De magistro and from Ad Simplicianum , Augustine replies that rebuke may work as an external admonition, even as a divine calling, that helps people turn to God inwardly and hence must not be withheld De correptione et gratia 7—9.
To the query that predestination undermines free will, Augustine gives his usual answer that our freedom of choice has been damaged by original sin and must be liberated by grace if we are to develop the good will necessary for virtue and happiness. Wetzel — ; some, especially later, texts do however present prevenient grace as converting the will with coercive force Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum 1.
A problem related to predestination but not equivalent to it is divine foreknowledge Matthews 96—; Wetzel ; for general discussion, Zagzebski His solution is that while external actions may be determined, inner volitions are not. These are certainly foreknown by God but exactly as what they are, i. De libero arbitrio 3. This argument is independent of the doctrine of grace and original sin; it applies not just to fallen humankind but also to Adam and Eve and even to the devil, whose transgression God had, of course, foreseen De civitate dei The criterion of membership in the city of God a metaphor Augustine takes from the Psalms, cf.
Psalm quoted, e. A person belongs to the city of God if and only if he directs his love towards God even at the expense of self-love, and he belongs to the earthly city or city of the devil if and only if he postpones love of God for self-love, proudly making himself his greatest good De civitate dei The main argument of the work is that true happiness, which is sought by every human being ib.
The first ten books deconstruct, in a manner reminiscent of traditional Christian apologetics, the alternative conceptions of happiness in the Roman political tradition which equates happiness with the prosperity of the Empire, thus falling prey to evil demons who posed as the defenders of Rome but in fact ruined it morally and politically and in Greek, especially Platonic, philosophy which, despite its insight into the true nature of God, failed to accept the mediation of Christ incarnate out of pride and turned to false mediators, i.
The history of the two cities begins with the creation of the world and the defection of the devil and the sin of Adam and Eve bks. Obviously, however, the heavenly and earthly cities must not be confounded with the worldly institutions of the church and the state.
In history, each of these, and the Church in particular, is a mixed body in which members of the city of God and the earthly city coexist, their distinction being clear only to God, who will separate the two cities at the end of times ib. While the city of God is a stranger or, at best, a resident alien peregrinus: ib. This dualistic account is however qualified when, in the part of the work that moves closest to social philosophy, Augustine analyzes the attitude a Christian ought to adopt to the earthly society she inevitably lives in during her existence in this world.
There are higher and lesser degrees of both individual and collective peace, e. The lower forms of peace are relative goods and, as such, legitimately pursued as long as they are not mistaken for the absolute good. Political peace is thus morally neutral insofar as it is a goal common to Christians and non-Christians.
Augustine criticizes Cicero because he included justice in his definition of the state Cicero, De re publica 1. The fact that God searches for [ Adam ] does not proceed from any ignorance on the part of God, but it manifests man's hope of a future discovery and salvation in Christ.
A century later, Chrysostom Hom. Some modern theologians of mission regard the Lord's call to Adam as the first concrete evidence of the mission of God - God's own redemptive initiative toward fallen man.
Augustine, on the other hand, read Genesis quite differently. Although concurring with Novatian and Chrysostom that the Lord's question 'where are you? For Augustine, God's questions were intended to fully expose Adam's pride and sin; so they are more about pronouncing judgement and pointing to the death of Adam's soul than alluding to redemption cf.
Dei Another passage that Augustine interpreted differently was Genesis , in which the Lord curses the serpent: 'I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. He writes:. Christ completely renewed all things, both taking up the battle against our enemy and crushing him who at the beginning had led us captive in Adam, trampling on his head, as you find in Genesis that God said to the serpent.
Presley A number of modern scholars join a tradition of scholarship that regards these divine curses as the protoevangelium - the gospel or redemption declared in the garden in the midst of man's fallenness. For instance, Wayne Grudem asserts:. Even in the lifetime of Adam and Eve there are some words of God that point toward a future salvation: in Genesis the curse on the serpent includes a promise that the seed of the woman one of her descendants would bruise the head of the serpent but would himself be hurt in the process - a promise ultimately fulfilled in Christ.
Christopher Wright adds, 'Paul affirms that Jesus, the seed of Abraham, is the one through whom that promise has become a reality' cf. Erickson ; Kaiser In general, Augustine read this passage to symbolise humanity's ongoing struggle with the devil. In his allegorical commentary against the Manicheans Gn. He then summarises:. And this is why he looks out for the woman's heel, in order to catch her if unlawful pleasure creeps in; and she looks out for his head, in order to cut him off at the very beginning of his evil persuasive suggestions.
Interestingly, later in the completed literal commentary Gn. As Augustine seemed quite committed to Scripture's redemptive narrative, especially in his two cities framework in De Civitate Dei, it seems surprising that he would not read the Genesis in light of this overarching narrative.
Perhaps the African father was so preoccupied with other matters -the Donatists, Pelagius, pastoral challenges - that he chose to allow his earlier allegorical readings of the passage to suffice. Another possible reason why Augustine failed to see the redemptive angle in the text was simply because of how his Old Latin Vetus Latina Bible rendered this verse cf.
Metzger , Perhaps this less potent word led Augustine to conclude less theologically from this text. It should be noted, however, that Irenaeus also preached in part from a Gallican version of the Old Latin Bible - albeit two centuries before Augustine in Hippo - and his text also uses 'watch over' observo as well Harvey Yet, as shown, Irenaeus clearly interpreted this activity as the future work of Christ destroying the works of the devil.
How did Augustine articulate redemption? Although Augustine did not read these noted Genesis 3 passages in a particularly redemptive manner, there is still evidence for redemptive thought in his exegesis of Genesis Keeping with his general hermeneutic, Augustine's understanding of redemption is framed by his Christological reading of Scripture.
In a broad sense, Augustine in De Genesi contra Manichaeos sketches out redemptive history in the Scriptures by interpreting each day of creation as an epoch within this narrative Gn. For Augustine, the 5th day signified the growth of the Jews who had rejected Christ. In the midst of this fleshly age - that of the old man.
The 7th day or age represents the rest that believers will take with Christ from their good deeds Gn. In a similar way, Augustine's Confessiones begin with a prayer to find rest in God. However, it is only after Augustine and his readers grasp the magnitude of creation, fall, and restored creation that such a spiritual rest is attainable.
Hence, his Genesis reflections in Books of Confessiones ought to be read in light of this motif of rest Hill Augustine's most profound thoughts on redemption come within his discussion of creation and the relationship between the first Adam and the second Adam.
Augustine largely understood the image of God to mean that human beings - in contrast to animals - were rational beings Gn. He further asserts that the tree of life in the garden represented Wisdom or Christ and, in keeping with his classic view on evil, he argued that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a privation of goodness.
Furthermore, he contrasts the self-willed and fallen Adam to Christ and his redeeming work - one who was good but experienced evil for fallen sinners. Augustine describes Christ as:. Continuing to contrast Christ to Adam, Augustine adds:.
The one who did not come to do his own will but the will of the one by whom he had been sent, not like that other one who chose to do his own will How right it is that 'just as through the disobedience of one many have been constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one man shall many be constituted as just'. He asserts that Adam was made a living soul with a physical body; yet, one that could die if he ate from the forbidden tree.
Augustine writes:. For certainly on that very day their nature was altered for the worse and vitiated, and by their most just banishment from the tree of life they were involved in the necessity even of bodily death. In Confessiones, Augustine reflects on his own sins and the reality of being Adam's offspring:.
With all the sins I had committed against you, against myself and against other people, evil deeds many and grievous over and above the original sin that binds all of us who die in Adam.
Whilst the first Adam was created as a living soul, Augustine asserts that '"the last Adam was made a quickening spirit", plainly referring to Christ, who has so risen from the dead that He cannot die anymore' Civ. Again, referencing Paul 1 Cor , Augustine summarises the redemption made available through the work of Christ: 'Since by man came death, by Man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive' Civ. In summarising Augustine's thoughts on redemption in John's Gospel In Johannis evangelium tractatus , Finbarr Clancy succeeds in capturing what Augustine had articulated from Genesis as well.
The sinless Adam restores the image of God in the first Adam, who lies scattered and broken on the face of the earth Linking the themes of creation and redemption, Augustine refers to Christ as 'hominis formator et reformator, creator et recreator, factor et refactor'.
Part Six in the Uniquely Unique mini-series. We take stock of one more distinguishing feature of humans—the image of God. People on all sides of the creation debate are convinced the other sides are doing it all wrong.
After taking part in many conversations where people talk past one another, BioLogos forum moderator Christy has noticed a few recurring themes. In the final part of his four-part series, J. In this excerpt from their new book, geologist Gregg Davidson and theologian Ken Turner shine a spotlight on Genesis One as theologically rich literature first and foremost. This seems to relate to common patterns today aside from the Manichaeism, of course.
Augustine continued to struggle with the early chapters of Genesis all throughout his theological career, writing five distinct commentaries on them and engaging them widely in his other works and sermons as well. Creation became central to his entire thought. For him, it was the key to understanding the deepest longings of the human heart. Augustine engaged creation in dialogue with non-Christian beliefs of his day, so in his doctrine of creation you gather a sense of how Christianity as a whole made sense to him.
His views on creation continued to exert a massive influence on the church in subsequent eras, particularly in relation to the rise of modern science. Augustine adopted a kind of framework interpretation of Genesis 1, vigorously rejecting the idea that the days there are hour periods of time. This view, and the three main reasons Augustine leveraged in favor of it, was enormously influential on the medieval church.
Augustine vociferously affirmed the goodness of animal death prior to the fall, in opposition to the Manichaean criticism that animal death is evil. He was particularly fascinated with insects and carnivorous animals, and spent a great deal of time reflecting on why God made them as a part of his good creation.
Augustine considered whether Adam and Eve were symbolic figures, and developed a nuanced and literarily sensitive approach to this question.
His conclusion defended their historicity but acknowledged a high level stylization and symbolization in Genesis There are striking parallels between his approach and various positions in the current discussion of evolution, Adam and Eve, and the fall.
There is much more, but hopefully that gives you a sense of his incredible relevance. Gavin Ortlund. What is BioLogos?
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