73. Cf. lib. arb. 2.16.44-17.46. 74. Cf. Vannier, Creatio, 14. (continued)
Creation as the Unifying Prologue 25 not a "reformation" because there is not yet any estrangement from the divine. Ladner writes that for Augustine's optimistic doctrine of creation, "there can be no reformatio because there had been no forma, there can be no formatio of a still informis creatura; this formatio consists in reuocatio to God of a creature, which, when it was drawn out of nothingness, found itself outside God, and in conuersio of that creature to Him."75 Ladner accurately portrays Augustine's doctrine of creation as an initial moment of formation: divinely desired and good, creation does not stand in need of any reformation prior to humanity's free misuse of it.76
Let us now take up the next few lines of De Genesi ad Litteram 1.4 which follows the passage just analyzed above. Here Augustine recapitulates the four themes we just discussed and brings them into clearer focus. The Word is the Father's perfect likeness and equality; the Son is defined again by his constant adherence to the Father; and creation's conversion, formation, and imitation are again the means per quid fecerit:
By so turning back and being formed creation imitates, every element in its own way, God the Word, that is the Son of God who always adheres to the Father in complete likeness and equality of being, by which he and the Father are one; but it does not imitate this form of the Word if it turns away from the creator and remains formless and imperfect, incomplete . . . when it says, In the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1); here he is being suggested as the source of creation still in its formless imperfection. But the Son is being alluded to as being also the Word where the text runs God said, Let it be made. Thus his being the beginning implies his being
75. Gerhart B. Ladner, "St. Augustine's Conception of the Reformation of Man to the Image of God," Augustinus Magister II (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1954–55), 867–78; 872. 76. This is in line with what James K. A. Smith, "Staging the Incarnation: Revisioning Augustine's Critique of Theatre," Literature and Theology 15 (June, 2001): 123–39, argues when he writes that Augustine's "most un Platonic moment [is] located in his affirmation of the goodness of materiality based on a logic of creation rather than emanation," 131.