5. Cf. Die Confessiones des Augustinus von Hippo: Einführung und Interpreta- (continued)
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 181
O'Donnell simply states that it is "far from clear whether the caelum caeli is to be identified with the angels at the time of the conf." But O'Donnell never entertains the ecclesial nature of this heavenly abode.6 However, allow me to provide four properties which only the "heaven of heaven" and the church at its inception (as described in the Enchiridion passage above) could share, thus arguing that they could be regarded as Augustinian corollaries.
First, while neither is of course equal to the Trinity, both are depicted as God's first and supreme creature. In the Enchiridion, the church is treated immediately after the Trinity because the creed demands such an ordo confessionis: after confessing the creator, his dwelling must next be considered ("like a house after the one who lives in it"). In the Confessions, heaven's heaven is consistently portrayed as the very antithesis of the mutability out of which all visible creation comes: "two realities: one near to yourself (prope te), the other bordering on nothingness; one, to which you alone would be superior, the other, than which nothing would be lower."7
Second, both the church as represented in the Enchiridion and the "heaven's heaven" in the Confessions transcend any change, whether that be attributed to the distentions of time or the mayhem of sin. Neither have ever "fallen" and thus remain wholly intact. At Confessions 12.9.9 we read that the heaven's heaven "transcends mutability" and is thus without any lapse (sine ullo lapsu . . . excedit omnem uolubilem uicissitudinem); whereas at Enchiridion 15.56 we are pointed to that tion zu den 13 Büchern, edited by Norbert Fischer and Cornelius Mayer (Freiburg: Herder, [1998] 2004); A Reader's Companion to Augustine's Confessions, edited by Kim Paffenroth and Robert Kennedy (London: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2003); Carl Vaught, Access to God in Augustine's Confessions: Books X–XIII (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005).
6. James O'Donnell, Augustine: Confessions: Introduction, Text and Commentary, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), vol. III, 303.
7. conf. 12.7.7; Boulding, Confessions, 316; my emphasis.