90. conf. 11.29.39: "donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui"; (continued)
32 Creation as the Unifying Prologue the triune life, standing as the preeminent indication that God wills to share his life with other beings.
Not brought out of some pre-existing substrate nor coerced out of anything other than God's generosity, creation for Augustine is far from the Manichaean attack on the good. Rather, creation for Augustine is understood by God's freely choosing to share the divine life with beings who find their meaning and purpose in reflecting their creator's majesty. To some extent, all creatures do this by their mere being.
This is how we begin to answer Augustine's second foundational question: "By what means was creation brought about?" By concentrating on De Genesi ad Litteram 1.4, we came to see how all existents must "turn" to the existence-imparting Word. In this way, all creatures show forth a doxological deiformity which bespeaks God's life and activity. Because such conuersio is simultaneous with any created being, there can be no "pure nature" for Augustine, no pure human virtue, no natural way of understanding anything without some implicit yet radical dependence upon God. But whereas all creatures are unshakably like God, those creatures who are created in God's image come to share in God's life in a transforming and unitive way. No creature is co-eternal with God.91 Nevertheless, every created existent is somehow like its creator. All creatures acknowledge and, in a way suitable to their own natures, praise God. Because each and every existent must participate in God, each creature manifests varying degrees of the divine presence. This is how Augustine came to develop an unconquerable hope when he turned to the world around him.92 In regarding the world around him, deep throughout God's handiwork Augustine saw a goodness which no sin or corruption could erase. As we shall see, all of creation's contingency
91. Cf. ciu. Dei 12.16. 92. Cf. Donald Burt, "Courageous Optimism: Augustine on the Good of Creation," Augustinian Studies 21 (1990), 55–66.