Augustine in His Own Words
Against the Manichees 223 with a strong faith, await Him with a sure hope, and love Him with an ardent charity.30
Answering Objections to Genesis
The Manichees attacked Genesis on numerous scores. They especially singled out Gn 1:26, that human beings are made in God's "image and likeness"—which, they argued, implied that the God of Genesis had a body, just as humans do. Here Augustine, to rebut this, alerts his audience to the metaphorical character of the Genesis text. From On Genesis Against the Manichees, Book 1:
(17.27) It is this question above all that the Manichees raised with their endless chatter, and they taunt us for believing that the human person was made to the image and likeness of God. They look at the shape of our body and ask so infelicitously whether God has a nose and teeth and a beard and also inner organs and other things we need. It is, however, ridiculous, even wicked, to believe that there are such things in God, and so they deny that we were made to the image and likeness of God.31 We answer them that the Scriptures generally mention bodily parts in presenting God to an audience of the little ones, and this is true, not only of the books of the Old Testament, but also of the New Testament. For the New Testament mentions God's eyes and ears and lips and feet, and the Gospel proclaims that the Son is seated at the right hand of God the Father. The Lord himself says, "Do not swear by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is his footstool" (Mt 5:34–35). Likewise He says that He was casting out demons by the finger of God (Lk 11:20). All who understand the Scriptures spiritually have learned to understand by those terms, not bodily parts, but spiritual powers, as they do in the case of helmets and shield and sword and many other things (Eph 6:16, 17). Hence, we should first point out to these heretics the impudence with which they attack such words of the Old Testament, since they see these things used in the New Testament as well. Or perhaps they do not see them since they are blinded by their disputes.
(17.28) Let them know, nonetheless, that the spiritual believers in the Catholic teaching do not believe that God is limited by a bodily shape. When a person is said to have been made to the image of God, these words refer to the interior person, where reason and intellect reside. From these the human being also has power over the fish of the sea and the birds of heaven and all cattle
30. De libero arbitrio 2.19.53–20.54 (CCL 29:273); trans. Russell, FOTC 59:162–63. 31. See conf. 6.3.4 (CCL 27:76), where Augustine notes his relief that Christians did not actually hold the anthropomorphic view of God that Manichees accused them of holding.