Cosmology of Saint Augustine.

The creation

The philosophy of nature in Saint Augustine is also known as cosmology, in

general cosmologies belong to the physical branch of philosophy in modern terms
also called philosophy of nature, and deals with a rich variety of topics, including
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nature of matter, the notion of time, among others.

Saint Augustine in his cosmology addresses concepts such as time, creation, the
soul, man and God. Over time, Saint Augustine in his different works will develop
these and other concepts, which will be an important key within his philosophy. In
his work Soliloquios , he declares the goal of his research “So what do you want to
know? Everything I have lost, summarize it briefly, I want to know God and the
soul, nothing more?, nothing more.” 2

One of the first concepts is creation, for Saint Augustine creation has its origin in
God, what the creationist doctrine essentially postulates is that the entire universe
comes from a unique and omnipotent God, including living beings, therefore, They
would depend on that Supreme Being for their existence. 3

This central core of creationism was associated, for millennia, with biological ideas,
the research of which would have corresponded more properly to the natural
sciences. For example, the immobility of species and the doctrine that all of them
began to exist simultaneously at the beginning of time. 4

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1. Karla Pollmann, Cosmology and interpretation of Genesis in ancient Christianity , Center for science and faith, 2013, p.5
2.-Soliloquies 2,7
3.- Oroz Reta, J, San Agustín: meditation on a centenary, Pontifical University of Salamanca, 2014, p.48.

4.- Idem.

The work that is appropriate to investigate some aspects of Saint Augustine's

cosmology is Commentaries on Genesis since for ancient Christian theologians the
exegesis of the book of Genesis was the genuine place for cosmogonic
speculations, Augustine insists on a world created with a principle and an end. He
granted evolutionary developments in nature after the end of the first six days of
creation by using the pagan category of seminal rationes. 5
Although Saint Augustine paid less attention to the problem of the structure of the
world than to those of knowledge, happiness, the soul and God, numerous
references are found in his works to the way of creation of the cosmos and its
structure, God created everything out of nowhere, his Neoplatonic and Stoic
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doctrine of the seminal reasons or germs of things to come also influences.

The Bishop of Hippo considers the seminal reasons as mediating elements

between the two aspects of creation, that is, that of simultaneous creation and that
of creation unfolded in time. Thus, when God created all things (simul), he included
in the same act a type of beings created potentially and causally so that they would
appear in the succession of time. 7

In general, the work Commentaries on the Genesis of Saint Augustine stands out
for its ambitious plan of defending the Genesis creation narrative against various
contemporary intellectual critics while developing and reconfirming several
cosmogonic themes. 8

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5.- K. Pollmann, Cosmology and interpretation of Genesis in ancient Christianity , Center for science and faith,
2013, pp.8 and 12.
6.- José Ferrater Mora, Dictionary of Philosophy , Montecasino, Volume I, Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos
Aires, p.47.
7.- Verónica Benavides G., Philosophica, Magazine of the institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of
Valparaíso, vol. I-II, 2013, p.12.
8.-K. Pollmann, Cosmology and interpretation of Genesis…, p. 12.

This world is, therefore, naturally changing and mobile; For this reason, the entities
that compose it have a very particular way of being, neither are they at all nor are
they absolutely not. On the one hand, they are, since they come from God, but on
the other hand they are not, since they are not what God is, in such a way that only
God, due to absolute immutability, is. 9

Time

In the beginning everything had a beginning, from which it follows that time began
there, so before creation there was no time, and it cannot be said that infinite
centuries passed before it, since they did not yet exist; For this very reason, no
time is coeternal with God. 10

Saint Augustine in his work Confessions, in book But he considers that this
question is meaningless since he considers that it is not possible to conceive a
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before prior to creation, since simultaneously with it time begins to exist.

“Who can stop him and fix him, so that he stops a little and captures for a moment
the splendor of eternity, which always remains, and sees that it is incomparable,
and that long time does not become long except by many movements that pass
and that they cannot coexist at the same time and that in eternity, on the contrary,
nothing happens but everything is present; and see finally, that every past is
pushed by the future, and that every future is preceded by a past, and everything
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past and future is created and passes by what is always present.”

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9.- Verónica Benavides G. The problem of the creation of the world: Saint Augustine in the 13th
century. RIL Editores, p.42.
10.- Muñoz Alonso López Gemma, Time in San Agustín, p.40.
11.- Confessions, XI, X.
12.- Idem.
Saint Augustine in the previous quote tells us that the past has already happened
and therefore no longer exists, the future has not yet occurred so it does not exist
either, but the present is what is happening, therefore it exists, therefore that the
division of time is a function of the present because it is the only existing time,
eternity tells us that it is that eternal present that always exists but different from
the time that we measure.

Indeed, for time to exist, transit is essential, but when an event occurs, it no longer
exists, and before it occurs it still does not exist; It seems, then, that only the
present time exists. Augustine faces the problem of measuring time, since it must
be measured when it passes, in the indivisible and unextended instant of the
present. 13

If the present has no space, if the past is no longer and the future is not yet, what is
measured? Saint Augustine is interested in the search for understanding the
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concept of time, its existence and the possibility that it can be measured.

Saint Augustine says that it is in the soul where present, past and future exist: “in
you, my soul, I measure times.” The soul “waits, attends and remembers, so that
what it hopes passes through that which attends to that.” that remember". Time,
then, is a distension of the soul and Saint Augustine goes so far as to say that the
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entire life of man is radical temporality, that is, radical distension.

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13.- Muñoz Alonso L., Time in San Agustín, pp. 41-42.
14.- San Agustín, Confesiones, critical edition and annotated by Ángel Custodio Vega, p.585.
15.- Confessions, XI, 26,33.

The matter

The notion of matter in Saint Augustine is framed in a metaphysical perspective

radically different from that proposed by Greek philosophy, and in particular, by
Aristotelianism, regarding raw matter it has a double inspiration: on the one hand, it
is based on the Bible and, on the other, in the Platonic philosophy inherited from
Plotinus. 16

“Of all visible things, the greatest is the world; Of all the invisible ones, God is. But
we know the existence of the world, we believe that of God. Regarding the creation
of the world by God, we believe in no one more surely than in God himself. And
where have we heard him? Nowhere better than in the Holy Scriptures, where a
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prophet said: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Saint Augustine has transformed the Hellenic notion of primary matter and inserted
it into an entirely new context: the formless matter is now called creaturely
mutability, referring to the chaotic matter of the Genesis story, that is, to the first
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stage of creaturely being upon which God will constitute the world.

“Therefore, there is no doubt that this matter, in any way and for almost nothing,
was made by God and that it was created at the same time with the things that
were made of it.” 19

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16.- Verónica Benavides G., The intellectual evolution of the notion of matter in Saint Augustine of
Hippo, p. 38.
17.-The City of God, IV, I.
18.- Verónica B., Intellectual evolution., p.38.
19.- From Genesis to the Letter, I, XV,9.

The act of creating consists radically in giving being to formless matter, a tenuous
and minute reality, but, in addition, at the same time God creates beings in their
very subsistence, he creates them with their respective forms, which corresponds
to the act of forming the unformed but existing, that is, this is the act by which God
grants perfection to what has already been created ex nihilo : matter. twenty
The creatures

“I, Lord, know with certainty that I love you, and I have no doubt about it. You hurt
my heart with your words and then I immediately loved you. In addition to this, also
the sky, the earth and all the creatures contained in them everywhere are telling
me to love you.” twenty-one

It is a voice that is loud and strong, so that only those who have been deafened by
sin cannot hear it. For this reason, Saint Augustine, echoing the cosmological
argument at the beginning of Saint Paul's letter to the Romans, points out that
whoever cannot hear or contemplate the greatness of God in creation becomes
inexcusable from being condemned, because by closedness in sin or because of
his hardness of heart. 22

“All animals, from the smallest to the largest, see this beautiful machine of the
universe, but they cannot ask it those questions, because they do not have
understanding, which, as a superior, can judge the news and species that the
senses bring. Men can do it, and through the knowledge of these visible creatures
they can come to know the invisible perfections of God.” 22
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20.- Verónica Benavides G., The intellectual evolution of the notion of matter in Saint Augustine of
Hippo, p. 40.
21.-Confessions, 10,6.
22.- Enrique Eguiarte, Augustinian Recollect, The Book of Creatures (in Ps. 45,7), Rome, 2015, p.1.
23.-Confessions,10,6.
God ordered and created all things, he arranged everything good, true, unique.
God gave creation transcendence, everything our intelligence seeks is in God,
everything that is comes from him and is directed towards him. 24

For Saint Augustine, the cosmos that surrounds the human being is not only a
medium in which the human being can satisfy his needs, nor is it only the habitat in
which he lives. The world, all of creation, are a living and patent sign of the
existence of a loving God who has arranged everything for human beings. Creation
is also for Saint Augustine a living messenger of the deep love that God has for
man, and of his universal call to salvation. 25

Conclusion

Saint Augustine presents us with a very theological interpretation of his cosmology,

since he attributes everything to the creative act of God from nothing, where time
originates at the same time that this creative act happens. The matter that Saint
Augustine talks about is not what the Greek philosophers defined but rather it is an
already existing matter which God used for the creation of the universe.

Then Saint Augustine will tell us about 3 types of knowledge: intellectual, through
reason, sensitive knowledge or through the senses given to creatures and finally
contemplating eternal truths in the mind of God.

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24.-Carlos Blanco, Philosophical and artistic essays, Dykinson, SL, Madrid, p.107.
25.- Enrique Eguiarte, The Book of Creatures, p.1.