Tractates on the Gospel of John
56 ST. AUGUSTINE all things were made in him, all things are life." Let them not mislead you. Read it thus: "That which was made" — punctuate here, and after that put — "in him is life."
(3) What does this mean? The earth was made; but the earth itself which was made is not life. There is, however, in wisdom itself, in a spiritual way, a certain reason by which the earth was made: this is life.
17. I shall explain this to you, my beloved people, as well as
I can. A carpenter makes a chest. First he has the chest in his creative knowledge. For if he did not have the chest in his creative knowledge, from what source would he produce it in constructing it? But the chest exists in his creative knowledge in such a way that it is not the very same chest which is seen by the eyes. In his creative knowledge it exists invisibly; in the product it will exist visibly. Look now, it has come to exist in the product. Does it cease to exist in [the carpenter's] creative knowledge? Both the one came into existence in the product and at the same time the other which exists in his creative knowledge remains. For the one chest can rot, and from that other one which exists in his creative knowledge, another can again be made.
40. Berrouard, Homelies I-XVI, 162-165, has "dans son idee"; H. Browne in Homilies on the Gospel According to St. John, and his First Epistle by St. Augustine,
Bishop of Hippo, LF 26 (1848), has "in theory"; and J. Gibb, Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, vol. 1, Tractates 1-37 in The Works of Aurelius Augustine, 10 (Edinburgh, 1873) has simply "in design." One might well translate the phrase very literally "in his art." This passage is difficult to translate since neither "design" nor "theory" nor "art" nor '"idee" precisely expresses what Augustine is trying to say. Ars in Latin often designates a kind of knowledge of some particular sort, as e.g., defined by Probus in H. Keil, Grammatici Latini (Leipzig, 1864), 4.47; and especially a knowledge of precepts that leads to some concrete end result, as, e.g., defined by Asper in Keil, (Leipzig, 1868), 5.547. When this Latin concept is combined with Platonic concepts, then the artist possesses a knowledge, gained through intellection, of the perfect form or idea involved in his artistic work, as well as a knowledge of the principles of design, proportion, and order, combined with the skills that enable him to produce the desired object from the unshaped matter with which he starts, that is, art is a creative knowledge. See Plato, Republic 597 and Plotinus, Enneads 4.3.10 and 29-30, 5.8.1, and 5.9.11 in the Teubner edition of R. Volkmann (Leipzig, 1883); see also, R. O'Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 28-49, especially 31-32.