The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
18 Creation as the Unifying Prologue so named for out of this primal creature the formation of all other contingent existents, spiritual and material alike, is understood. Secondly, the latter books of the Confessions assist us in understanding what is meant by the rather enigmatic phrase found above, praecedens formationem suam, non tempore, sed origine, a phrase which appears two more times in the same commentary to describe this inherent capacity to be formed.56 Formability is created simultaneously with time but is said to precede all else because it is that out of which all else (including time) comes. It is the way a voice "precedes" distinct words.57 Formability could also be the way a sound has logical priority before the song that it forms (as imagined earlier in the Confessions).58 We shall see this relationship between the discursive unfolding of created things and the genesis of formability when we next turn to our key text where Augustine wonders if formability had to be spoken into being at all, because formability is not the same as a kind of created thing that must adhere to the Father in the Word. Yet, as a creature, formability is indeed contingent, remaining so completely undetermined that it is not susceptible to the alterations of temporality. It is not so much changeable as it is changeable-ness. Augustine can therefore juxtapose this "lowest" creature with the "highest"—formlessness with the "heaven of heaven"—as both are unaffected by vicissitudes of temporality, and yet neither is co-eternal with God.59
As we saw above, by the time the later De Genesi ad Litteram (401–15) is composed, formabilitas always appears in terms of its need to be formed by the Word of God. In order not to remain indistinct, formability must be fashioned into a definite creature by the Word [uerbo eius formanda].60 The
56. Cf. Gn. litt. 7.27 and 8.20. 57. Cf. Gn. litt. 1.15; CSEL 28.21. 58. Cf. conf. 12.29.40: "Sed prior est origine, quia non cantus formatur, ut sonus sit, sed sonus formatur, ut cantus sit"; CCL 27.239.
59. conf. 12.12.15; CCL 27.223. 60. Gn. litt. 5.5; CSEL 28.147.