november 8, 2025
Writing near the end of the 4th century, Augustine wrote his Confessions as both a narrative of his spiritual journey, from his youth until his eventual conversion to a doctrinally rich practicing Christian, and as a theological reflection to guide his readers to a deeper understanding of God’s character and creation. Book XII of Augustine’s Confessions takes a detour from the narration of Augustine’s personal spiritual journey to unpack the meaning of biblical revelation, particularly in the context of the first two opening verses of Genesis.
Augustine deviates from a reflection on the nature of time in Book XI to explain the meaning of the beginning of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), in a more non-chronological manner. He makes this transition to stress that time itself came into being with creation, and that there was no prior moment or interval in which God awaited the act of creating. Book XII is not an arbitrary deviation from Augustine’s personal story but a culmination of the theological implications he discovered through it. By transitioning from his spiritual story to exegeting Genesis, Augustine demonstrates that theological reflection is a core part of living out one’s spiritual journey, and that Scripture invites both deep philosophical engagement and straightforward advice, as well as literal revelation.
Before he eventually converted, many philosophies, including Manichaeism, Skepticism, and Neo-Platonism, influenced Augustine. Through these encounters, he learned to think critically about how to derive truth from what is known to mankind. Augustine sought to unite reason and faith, continuing the Church’s tradition of believing that all truth comes from God, whether discovered through philosophical reasoning or His divine revelation. This ideology enabled Augustine to draw on Platonic ideas in his reasoning, such as the distinction between the visible and invisible foundations upon which the universe rests. Through this, Augustine can address the key concerns of philosophers more familiar with Platonism, Manichaeism, and other rival philosophies, while promoting the divine revelation given to Christians in Scripture.
His meditation on Genesis 1:1-2 allows for a more complex understanding of heaven and earth than a literal reading would suggest, demonstrating a willingness to accept all the implications his exegesis provides. His method represents that Scripture addresses both the literal and metaphysical aspects of creation, and that theologians must embrace the multiple meanings instead of seeing them as rivals. Augustine utilizes Book XII as a connection between his philosophical reflection on time and his theological interpretation of Genesis, demonstrating an example of approaching Scripture rooted in a deep understanding of the metaphysics of God’s creation. His acceptance of the possibility of multiple interpretations of Genesis 1:2 is an invitation to explore how Christians can understand Scripture more deeply than its literal meaning suggests, and all of these interpretations can unite to form a single, divine truth. Therefore, he interprets Scripture both literally and allegorically, being charitable to the vast possibilities of interpretation. This style of interpretation ultimately demonstrates that Augustine is committed to uniting human understanding with the divine revelation provided to Christians through Scripture, offering intellectual stimulation and understanding, as well as a transformation of the soul. In short, Book XII is Augustine’s bridge between his philosophical understanding of the nature of time and his exegesis of the creation story in Genesis 1, demonstrating how to approach Scripture maturely after being oriented towards God.
Augustine interprets the phrase “in the beginning” as not referring to a temporal measure of time, but to Christ as the divine Word or Wisdom, through whom all things were created. He asserts in Chapter 17 of Book XII of his Confessions that “anyone who takes the words ‘in the Beginning’ to be another way of saying ‘in the first place’ can only understand ‘heaven and earth’ in this context as the matter of heaven and earth, that is, the matter of the whole of creation, both spiritual and corporeal.” If we agree with his assertion that time is created by God, as stated in Book XI, then this beginning refers not to a point in time but to an eternal principle—the divine Wisdom or Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1-3). Under Augustine’s framework, this is not a speculative interpretation of the text, but the intended meaning. The creation of the world does not happen before or within time, but with the creation of time. Adhering to Augustine’s view of time allows us to consider a God who is unchanging and consistent in His eternity, never changing or waiting to start creation. God is eternally creative, yet the earth is temporal because time is part of the earth’s created nature. Augustine reads his philosophy of time into his trinitarian doctrine, stating that Scripture’s first verse implies the Son as the Logos of heaven and earth.
Immediately after “in the beginning,” Genesis states that God created the “heaven and earth,” (Gen. 1:2). Augustine says in Confessions Book XII: “in relation to the heaven of heaven, even the heaven of our earth is like an earth. And both these great bodies are not unreasonably considered as earth, in relation to that ineffable heaven which belongs to the Lord, not to the sons of men.” Augustine does not submit to a spatial reading of this verse, and draws from his Neo-Platonic views to affirm “heaven” as the invisible, spiritual reality of creation, which he calls the heaven of heavens, inhabited by angels. Later in Book XII, Augustine asserts that “From this invisible and unorganized earth, from this formlessness, from this almost-nothing, Thou wert to make all things by which this mutable world subsists—yet it does not really subsist.” He attributes the formless, changeable substance of the visible creation to the term earth, which allows him to affirm creation ex nihilo without the necessity of matter pre-existing it. He uses the phrase constat et non constat (“subsists—yet it does not really subsist”) to emphasize that although the world does subsist, it only does so through the constant, eternal support of God. When Genesis 1:1 refers to “earth,” it is a primitive, formless matter that receives form from God, and when it refers to “heaven,” it is the realm of spiritual beings within God’s creation that does not require matter. By making this distinction, Augustine models humility in his interpretation by acknowledging that different theologians may perceive heaven and earth differently, yet still proclaim the truth that all of God’s creation, whether visible or invisible, is upheld by His creative act, participating in His goodness.
Augustine also explains how the world is revealed to us. Why does Genesis narrate a sequence of days if the world was created with time instantaneously, as Augustine prescribes in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis, where he says, “He, who created all things together, simultaneously created these six days.” Later, in Book Five, Augustine introduces the concept of rationes seminales, stating that everything was initially created in a seed-like form, with the capacity to spring forth and grow into its proper form at a later point in time through God’s providence. Rationes seminales gives him the ability to both assert an instantaneous creation and marry it to the revealing of the world through time in the first chapter of Genesis. With this mindset, the 6 days refer not to a literal week of work from God, but are a symbol for the revelation of the seeds planted in creation to mankind’s limited mind. With this rationale, the order in which each part of creation is revealed to us is not a random or arbitrary decision, but dictated by the divine Word and Wisdom of God. This view once again affirms God’s timeless and unchanging nature, also providing a metaphysical reading of Genesis 1, which offers guidance on how to view the cosmos as revealed to us in God’s timeless plan.
Augustine insists that Genesis 1:1-2 contains a reference to all parts of the Trinity. God the Father is known as Creator. “In the beginning” refers to the Son, and the Spirit is referenced directly in the phrase “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The Father is associated with creation, the Son with Wisdom and the beginning, and love is represented by the Spirit hovering over the waters. Augustine draws a connection between the hovering of the Spirit over the waters and its perfecting love, which is poured out into human hearts (Romans 5:5). It follows that creation is not simply an act of power from God but an act of unity between the persons of the Trinity: the Father creating through the Son in the Spirit. Through this interpretation of Genesis 1, we can combine Augustine’s metaphysical understanding of creation with God’s attribute of love. The hovering of the Spirit over the waters is directly analogous to creation being bound to its Creator through His love and is constantly yearning for rest in Him.
There is no doubt that Augustine’s reading of Plotinus and his encounters with Neo-Platonism influenced his views of Genesis 1. He learned concepts such as the ascension of one’s soul and the idea of an overarching immaterial source of the world. Augustine takes these ideas and creatively modifies them in the light of Scripture’s revelation. Instead of teaching an impersonal Platonic god, from which reality is formed because of philosophical necessity, Augustine teaches a Scriptural, personal, triune God who creates from nothing. Where Neo-Platonism confesses a negative view of matter, Augustine asserts that, although changeable, the visible world is good, as taught in Genesis. Augustine interprets Genesis 1:1-2 through a lens that gives him a strong requirement of creation as God’s will and a hierarchy through which he can establish his place.
It is essential to recognize that Book XII of his Confessions is more than just an exegesis on the first two verses of Scripture; it is a hallmark of Augustine’s religious journey and the culmination of his beliefs. Having gone from his troublesome struggle with excessive self-love in his young adulthood, he comes to find rest in the beginning of God’s revelation to determine the purpose and origin of His creation. Augustine reads the phrase “in the beginning” as Christ, understands “heaven and earth” as the invisible and visible aspects of creation, and interprets the “hovering Spirit” as the love that God has. In this way, he integrates his doctrine of creation with his reflections on time. This interpretation embodies a model of humility and diversity in Scripture interpretation, with complex meanings ultimately leading to an eternal truth. Augustine demonstrates in Book XII of his Confessions that Scripture is not a historical annal or science textbook, but a revelation of doctrinal and ontological truths about reality grounded in the personal, triune God who creates and loves.
caleb paterson
Bibliography
Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Edited by Roy Joseph Deferrari. Translated by Vernon J. Bourke. Vol. 21. The Fathers of the Church. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1953.St. Augustine. St. Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Edited by Johannes Quasten, Walter J. Burghardt, and Thomas Comerford Lawler. Translated by John Hammond Taylor. 41st ed. Vol. I. Ancient Christian Writers. New York; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982.Augustine of Hippo. The City of God, Books I–VII. Edited by Hermigild Dressler. Translated by Demetrius B. Zema and Gerald G. Walsh. Vol. 8. The Fathers of the Church. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1950.