Chapter 87 of 552

73. Cf. lib. arb. 2.16.44-17.46. 74. Cf. Vannier, Creatio, 14.

24 Creation as the Unifying Prologue an existent's being continues throughout the Plotinian cosmos, thus uniting the world into a harmonious whole. There are four important points to highlight in order to understand how Augustine envisions creation's conversion toward God. From these we see four key aspects of Augustine's doctrine of creation as conversion.

First, this "turn" toward the One reveals the ultimate dependence of all derived existents upon the One. Second, this turn is the means by which the One is represented throughout the visible cosmos. Here Augustine must have found a convenient way of explaining creation's need to be converted continuously toward God as well as a way of showing how God is manifest in all of his good creation. Third, Augustine calls this conversion an imitation: creatures imitate the Word insofar as they come to the Father. Brought from nothing, creation is given existence and a definable nature only in the Word. Like the Word, then, creation must cleave and remain fast to the Father. This is how all existents brought about ex nihil must be formed by adhering to the immutable and everlasting. Because of their status as contingent beings, creatures must necessarily imitate the Word's adherence to the Father. All creation is thus like the Word and is essentially constituted so as to emulate the Word's union with the Father.

Fourth, and finally, creation's deformity is overcome by the Logos's self-disclosure of form.73 As early as the completion of Book 2 of De Libero Arbitrio (391–95), Augustine understood how the reception of form is the acquiring of existence and perfection, while the loss of form is a reduction to non-being. Form is what perfects and completes a creature. Form is received as each existent turns back to the divine, thereby acquiring existence and the perfections inherent in each created nature.74 In the words of Gerhart Ladner, this formation is

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