The Confessions - Book XII

In Book XII, Augustine shifts focus from time to the creation itself. He carefully reviews the opening chapters of Genesis, and the many interpretations of it. For the most part, Augustine keeps an open mind to the many possibilities that many commentators derive from interpreting the verses describing the creation. He repeats one interpretation after another, and usually finds that each interpretation is possible. Augustine dismisses those who remain fixated upon one interpretation of the creation verses, when many are possible, though he finds a few are incompatible with Scripture.

He rejects that the Scripture teaches that God did not create everything. He equally rejects that God did not create everything out of nothing (in other words, out of pre-existing matter or energy) - that God created everything out of something that already existed. Augustine fully embraces creation ex-nihilio (Latin for out of nothing).

However, what really fascinates Augustine, is what follows in verse 2, which the King James Version translates from the Hebrew as the earth was without form, and void. For Augustine, this was the basic stuff God initially made, and which he then made everything else from - so that everything in the rest of the Genesis account is derived from this stuff.

Unfortunately, Augustine here spends a lot of time on the phrase "the heaven of heavens," which appears in some older translations in some passages in the Old Testament. However, the phrase is not an accurate translation of the original Hebrew phrase, and should not be accorded great weight. Augustine views this as a sort of perfection similar to the perfection Plato spoke about in forms. Most of Historic Christianity has not followed his thoughts on this, though it has followed him on other aspects of Genesis.

The main thought in Historic Christianity, which followed much of Augustinian thought about the Genesis account, though not all its nuances, is that God created everything out of nothing. However, Augustine wrote this part of his Confessions around A.D. 398. At this stage, he limited his discussion of Genesis to rejecting certain views he held before he became a Christian, and to consider several valid interpretations. Later in life, Augustine returned to more fully consider Genesis in a commentary he wrote on the 1st three chapters of Genesis, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (literal meaning the intent of the author), which he wrote between 401 and 415, comprised of 12 books (usually published today in 2 volumes). I don't have the time to summarize his extensive treatment here. However, clearly Augustine considered the creation account in Genesis critically important, briefly deals with it in his Confessions, and returns to deal with much more extensively later in his life.

On to Book XIII

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