The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
Creation as the Unifying Prologue 13 this love: (1) that God creates and (2) that this creation should abide.42 Here the love of God and the existence of creatures are again united. The Spirit preserves and orders by giving all things a share in divine immutability or permanence [manentia], thereby not only actualizing creatures but also holding them in existence.
The second type of union achieved by the Spirit has to do with the cosmos as a whole, described by Augustine at times as an ordo or at other times as a pondus. As Augustine imagines, "weight" leads to a sort of harmonious order, which is a sign of the Spirit's unifying love: "A body gravitates to its proper place by its own weight. . . . They are not at rest as long as they are disordered, but once brought to order they find their rest. Now, my weight is my love, and wherever I am carried, it is this weight that carries me."43 The cause of such movement is attributed here, first, to the donum Dei and, next, to the ignis Dei, clear allusions to the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit, a creature finds both communion with God as well as its proper positioning within the Father's creation. This is how the cosmos manifests a magnificent arrangement of creatures; and although Augustine might not personally understand why God chose to make such things as mice and worms, flies and frogs, he nonetheless praises God for the order he has imposed upon creation.44 Here Augustine helps us see that right relationship with God results in a rightly ordered creation. The created order is always an order of love, which James O'Donnell argues is "the animating and governing force of
Burnaby, Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (London: Canterbury Press, 1989), 164, calls this line "the classical passage on creation as the expression of God's love" but also reminds us that Augustine preferred bonitas over amor when describing the creator's motive in creating.
42. Gn. litt. 1.8: "duo quippe sunt, propter quae amat deus creaturam suam, ut sit et ut maneat"; CSEL 28.11.
43. conf. 13.9.10; Boulding, Confessions, 348. 44. Cf. Gn. adu. Man. 1.16.26; ciu. Dei 12.4, 19.13; Jo eu. tr. 1.14 where Augustine,