Augustine's Christian spirituality to accept, to trust, to believe the material world as telling us
Book I 67 by any fixed number of years, but however long anybody lives after those five ages, it is counted as old age; so in the same way in this age of the world there is no evident number of generations, and this is to keep the last day under wraps, which has to be kept hidden for our own good, as the Lord pointed out.41
A more personal allegorical interpretation of the seven days
25, 43. We also, one and all, have those six days in our personal lives, distin guished from each other in good works and an upright way of life, after which we should be hoping to rest. On the first day we have the light of faith, when we begin by believing visible things,42 and it is on account of this faith that the Lord was prepared to appear in visible form. On the second day we have a kind of solid structure in the discipline by which we distinguish between things of the flesh and things of the spirit, as between the nether and the upper waters. The third day is the one on which we separate our minds from the slippery slope and the stormy waves of fleshly temptations, like the dry land from the disturbances of the sea, to bear the fruits of good works, so that we can now say: With the mind l serve the law of God, but with theflesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25). On the fourth day, on which we have already been making and discerning spiritual perceptions in that solid structure of discipline, we see what unchangeable truth is, which shines in the soul like the sun; and we have the soul made a participant in this truth itself, and bestowing order and beauty upon the body, like the moon lighting up the night; and like all the stars, twinkling and shining in the night, we have those spiritual perceptions in the foggy darkness of this life.
Made stronger and braver by awareness of these things, we begin to produce results on the fifth day, acting in this most turbulent world, as in the waters of the sea, in the interests ofbrotherhood and good fellowship; we produce from bodily activities, which pertain to this sea, that is, to this present life, "reptiles of live souls," that is, works which benefit live souls; also "great whales," that is, the bravest kinds of action which contemptuously smash their way through the
41. See Acts 1:7; 1 Thess 5:1-2. 42. A strange description of faith, surely, as believing visible things! But it was basic to Augustine's Christian spirituality to accept, to trust, to believe the material world as telling us about its maker; and a basic affirmation against the Manichees. who had no trust or faith in the material world at all, but rejected it as evil. Augustine stayed with this idea and deepened it all his life. 1n The Trinity, X11 and X111, he will develop the idea of faith being an act of the feminine function of the mind, of knowledge as distinct from wisdom, and will conclude that the immediate object of Christian faith is the incarnate Word, precisely the flesh, the visible material humanity of Jesus Christ. There he has not been thinking any more of the Manichees, but rather of the Platonists. About them he had said in the Confessions, V11.9, 13: "1n their books 1 read (not that the same words were used, but precisely the same doctrine was taught...) that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; he was God. He was with God in the beginning.... ; but that the Word was madeflesh and dwelt among its. 1 d id not read there." So Christian faith begins with the man, Christ Jesus.