“God” in Augustine’s Confessions

Abstract

When reading through Augustine’s Confessions, one notices a striking variety of descriptions of God. The aim of this paper is to discern and – as far as possible – to interpret these various descriptions. Our main focus will be on pivotal texts from Books 1, 3, 5, 6 and 7. They document how much Manichaean views played a part in Augustine’s quest, and how closely this quest was linked to his ideas about evil. Briefly stated, Augustine’s search went from anthropomorphic-spatial thinking about God to corporeal/material-spatial and even panentheistic ideas and then (mainly under the inspiration of Neoplatonic philosophy, i.e., in all likelihood Plotinus’s Enneads) to a strictly spiritual and non-spatial understanding. But in all this, Manichaean ways of thought and even concepts remained present until the end. A final conclusion draws out the significance of this study for conceptualising the formation of God/gods in the Christian tradition as well as in other religious formations.