confessions and enchiridion [180]
casual citation of the old and familiar version. Is it possible that Augustine may have had the sensibilities and associations of his readers in mind -- for many of them may have not known Jerome's version or, at least, not very well? [460] Abyssus, literally, the unplumbed depths of the sea, and as a constant meaning here, "the depths beyond measure." [461] Gen. 1:2. [462] Augustine may not have known the Platonic doctrine of nonbeing (cf. Sophist, 236C-237B), but he clearly is deeply influenced here by Plotinus; cf. Enneads, II, 4:8f., where matter is analyzed as a substratum without quantity or quality; and 4:15: "Matter, then, must be described as toapeiron (the indefinite). . . . Matter is indeterminateness and nothing else." In short, materia informis is sheer possibility; not anything and not nothing! [463] Dictare: was Augustine dictating his Confessions? It is very probable. [464] Visibiles et compositas, the opposite of "invisible and unformed." [465] Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8. [466] De nihilo. [467] Trina unitas. [468] Cf. Gen. 1:6. [469] Constat et non constat, the created earth really exists but never is self-sufficient. [470] Moses. [471] Ps. 42:3, 10. [472] Cor. 13:12. [473] Cf. Ecclus. 1:4. [474] 2 Cor. 5:21. [475] Cf. Gal. 4:26. [476] 2 Cor. 5:1. [477] Cf. Ps. 26:8. [478] Ps. 119:176. [479] To "the house of God." [480] Cf. Ps. 28:1. [481] Cubile, i.e., the heart. [482] Cf. Rom. 8:26. [483] The heavenly Jerusalem of Gal. 4:26, which had become a favorite Christian symbol of the peace and blessedness of heaven; cf. the various versions of the hymn "Jerusalem, My Happy Home" in Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, pp. 580-583. The original text is found in the Liber meditationum, erroneously ascribed to Augustine himself. [484] Cf. 2 Tim. 2:14. [485] 1 Tim. 1:5. [486] This is the basis of Augustine's defense of allegory as both legitimate and profitable in the interpretation of Scripture. He did not mean that there is a plurality of literal truths in Scripture but a multiplicity of perspectives on truth which amounted to different levels and interpretations of truth. This gave Augustine the basis for a positive tolerance of varying interpretations which did hold fast to the essential common premises about God's primacy as Creator; cf. M. Pontet, L'Exegese de Saint Augustin predicateur (Lyons, 1944), chs. II and III. [487] In this chapter, Augustine summarizes what he takes to be the Christian consensus on the questions he has explored about the relation of the intellectual and corporeal creations. [488] Cf. 1 Cor. 8:6. [489] Mole mundi. [490] Cf. Col. 1:16. [491] Gen. 1:9. [492] Note how this reiterates a constant theme in the Confessions as a whole; a further indication that Bk. XII is an integral part of the single whole. [493] Cf. De libero arbitrio, II, 8:20, 10:28. [494] Cf. John 8:44. [495] The essential thesis of the De Magistro; it has important implications both for Augustine's epistemology and for his theory of Christian nurture; cf. the De catechizandis rudibus. [496] 1 Cor. 4:6. [497] Cf. Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; see also Matt. 22:37, 39. [498] Cf. Rom. 9:21. [499] Cf. Ps. 8:4. [500] "In the beginning God created," etc. [501] An echo of Job 39:13-16. [502] The thicket denizens mentioned above. [503] Cf. Ps. 143:10. [504] Something of an understatement! It is interesting to note that Augustine devotes more time and space to these opening verses of Genesis than to any other passage in the entire Bible -- and he never commented on the _full_ text of Genesis. Cf. Karl Barth's 274 pages devoted to Gen., chs. 1;2, in the Kirchliche Dogmatik, III, I, pp. 103-377. [505] Transition, in preparation for the concluding book (XIII), which undertakes a constructive resolution to the problem of the analysis of the mode of creation made here in Bk. XII. [506] This is a compound -- and untranslatable -- Latin pun: neque ut sic te colam quasi terram, ut sis uncultus si non te colam. [507] Cf. Enneads, I, 2:4: "What the soul now sees, it certainly always possessed, but as lying