MY LAND MY WIFE MY GOD Oppression of the feminine 2. Moltmanns correctives a) Image of God (1)...

MY LAND, MY WIFE, MY GOD!

CREATION THEOLOGY IN JÜRGEN MOLTMANN AND ST. AUGUSTINE

Scott Butler

December 2, 2008

Detailed Outline

I. Introduction……………………………………………………………………….1

A. Remembering The Da Vinci Code

1. Saturated market

2. Factual inaccuracies

B. Dan Brown’s critique of the Christian Church

1. A valid critique

2. Authority and Oppression

a) Structure of authority

b) Oppression of women

C. Thesis and direction

1. Moltmann’s observation

2. Assessing Augustine

3. Necessary correctives

II. Theology of the Creator and Creation……………………………….4

A. Jürgen Moltmann

1. The task of the theologian

2. A distinct creator

3. The activity of the will

a) Arbitrary will

b) Compulsive will

c) Free will

4. Freedom of the will in unity

a) Unity of will and essence

b) Love as the basis for freedom

5. Distinct but near

B. Saint Augustine

1. Time as a measure

a) Time measures change

b) God defies measurement

2. The limitations of time

3. The mind and memory

a) Mind holds entire things

(1) Psalm

(2) Song

b) Memory operates outside of time

4. God’s eternal knowledge

a) God outside of time

b) God has eternal memory

c) God creates from eternal knowledge

III. Comparison and contrast of creation theologies……………..12

A. Similarities

1. Eternal creator

a) God does not change

b) Creation is not co-eternal

c) God is unified in himself

2. Created heaven

a) Creation is formed and ordered

b) Heaven reflects God

c) Heaven cleaves to God

d) Heaven is not God

B. Differences

1. Moltmann’s critiques

a) Possession of the earth

b) Oppression of the feminine

2. Moltmann’s correctives

a) Image of God

(1) Hierarchical-monarchy model

(2) Communal-Trinity model

b) Body and soul of man

(1) Platonic man

(2) Dominative basis for society

(3) Unified inner being

3. Perspective in Augustine

a) Augustine’s world

(1) Importance of context

(a) Personal sin

(b) Corporate sin

(2) Corrupt religious systems

(a) Paganism

(b) Gnosticism

(3) Platonic concepts

(a) Balanced towards Christian truth

(b) Used only as useful

b) Augustine’s church

(1) Christian community

(a) Makes proper judgments

(b) God as source of knowledge

(c) Upright living

(2) Love in community

(3) Renew minds in Christ

IV. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….22

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Introduction

Remembering The Da Vinci Code

A Saturated Market

Dan Brown‟s thrilling novel The Da Vinci Code sparked controversy and debate when it

was released in the mainstream public market. Not only was the market flooded by multitudes of

the novel itself, but books of all kinds, and from every quarter, sprung up in opposition or

defense. Christian writers schooled in the traditions of men like Irenaeus heard their own call to

write against heresy and responded to Brown‟s assertions. Documentarians filmed and aired all

sorts of specials, one after the next, examining the historical and religious claims made in the

book. Noted scholars from the halls of sacred and secular institutions chimed in on the

intellectual and spiritual implications of The Da Vinci Code. If Dan Brown accomplished

anything it was the effective stirring of both the market and the minds of North America – that

and a very sizable royalty check.

Factual Inaccuracies

The criticisms leveled on Dan Brown‟s work of historical fiction centered on his inaccurate

use of history. Brown‟s critique of the Christian church was based on a fictional re-imagination

of actual events. Members of the scholarly community were not blind to author‟s bending of

history. Bart Ehrman noted the misuse of historical facts, but gave Brown credit for raising the

issues of history. In his assessment the book as a work of fiction was terrific, even if it failed in

terms of historical accuracy.1 “The Da Vinci Code has so well succeeded where professional

1. Bart D. Ehrman, Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A historian reveals what we really know about

Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004), 188-189.

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historians have miserably failed: it has gotten people interested in a range of historical questions

about early Christianity.”2 Indeed the misuse of historical facts did not go unnoticed, but for

many it posed a small problem. The book was, after all, fiction.

Dan Brown’s Critique of the Christian Church

A Valid Critique

The storm of debate caused by The Da Vinci Code has abated since its heyday in 2005.

Though booksellers may still have the odd text collecting dust in the bargain bin, the news cycle

on has moved on to the newer and more inane. So why has this paper opened re-visiting an

exhausted subject? Simply put, Brown‟s scathing review of the Church cannot be chalked up to

shoddy fact checking and promptly dismissed. Neither can Brown be dismissed as just another

hater of the Church. At a deep level this book shines light on real problems, real opinions, and

real theological issues. To belittle or ignore the issues in the way that large quarters of the church

have is to pass up an opportunity for self-evaluation and self-improvement. The critiques that

Brown levels at the church are viable and require clear headed response, regardless of the

fictitious character of the story.

Authority and Oppression

Brown‟s criticism of the church comes out in two ways. The first is towards the

authoritarian structure of the church. The second criticism is related: distaste for how males have

underappreciated and even oppressed females. Brown sets his sights most obviously on the

Roman Catholic Church, but he does not fail to indict the whole Christian church in the process.

And these critiques are not all together as unfounded as the historical misrepresentation may

2. Ehrman, 189.

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suggest. So after the knee jerk reaction of the Christian community has been given time to pass,

perhaps a fresh evaluation is due.

Thesis and Direction

Moltmann’s Observations

Jürgen Moltmann anticipated The Da Vinci Code’s critique of authority in the Christian

church by almost two decades. God in Creation expands to include comment on contemporary

ecological issues as well. In Moltmann‟s assessment the duel problems of dominating authority

in the church and oppressive exploitation of the earth are consequences of error in Christian

theology of Creation. The goal of this paper is to represent and examine that critique by

investigating Moltmann‟s claims in reference to Augustine‟s theology. We shall find that in

some ways Moltmann is very similar to Augustine in terms of creation theology.

Assessing Augustine

Augustine‟s conception of the eternal God who creates provides the backbone on which the

body of Moltmann‟s work lives. In some ways, however, Moltmann departs from the

Augustinian creation theology. Moltmann‟s most penetrating critiques are directed towards

Augustine‟s ideas about the creation of mankind as the image of God. In his appraisal men and

woman are better known as reflections of the Trinitarian community of love. In this

understanding community replaces hierarchy. Moltmann sees rest as the pinnacle of creation,

instead of work. Exploitation is amended to participation so that heaven and earth are whole in

worship of God.

Necessary Correctives

This paper will represent the arguments of both writers to show that while the negative

effects of Augustinian creation theology are real, we cannot abandon the first principles achieved

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in that system. The criticisms that Dan Brown raises are valid, but there is no need to abandon an

orthodox understanding of the Creator God in favour of The Da Vinci Code’s recovery and

praise of ancient paganism and fertility cults. Moltmann‟s correctives maintain and enrich an

orthodox and comprehensively theistic theology of creation – a theology that Augustine himself

would be proud to affirm.

Theology of the Creator and Creation

Jürgen Moltmann

The Task of the Theologian

The central task in a Christian theology of creation is to answer three basic questions: Who

is God? How did God create? How is God related to the creation? Answers to these questions

determine weigh in on every other consideration that follows. The manner of starting determines

the manner of finishing. In so far as creation is the “unqualified precondition for all happening in

time,”3 it sets the tone or establishes the first principles for understanding everything else in the

universe. Mythologies all around the world are tools for interpreting the divine and the earthly.

Humans order their lives and decisions on the basis of their belief about how and why there is

“something rather than nothing.”4 In Christian theology the main emphasis is reconciling a

spiritual and eternal God to a corporeal and finite creation. Augustine was closely acquainted

with this difficulty and worked out a theology of the creation that joined the eternality of God

with the finitude of creation by challenging and re-interpreting the notion of time. His

3. Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, trans. Margaret Kohl

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), 73.

4. Moltmann, 75. This is the “fundamental ontological question asked by Leibniz and Heidegger.”

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explanation provided the foundation on which subsequent theology built. Moltmann took

advantage of the footing his saintly predecessor labored to supply. His understanding embraces

the richness of the Creator‟s essential loving nature to bring the nature of God‟s freedom. Both

Augustine and Moltmann present a Creator who is distinct from creation but intimately related.

A Distinct Creator

Moltmann is wary of the tendency to equate God with creation. He carefully positions

himself far from the opinion that creation is in any way co-eternal with God. Creation does not

emanate from God‟s being. Some, like Paul Tillich, have made this claim, saying that the Creator

simultaneously creates himself alongside everything else. As the whole of creation comes forth

from the Creator it is confused with his being. If this were the case then there is no real

distinction between God and creation, only “… statements about the fundamental relationships

between God and the world.”5 Another suggestion along these lines is that the Creator

communicates his being to the creation on account of him being its primary cause.6 While this

suggestion affirms a difference between the cause and effect, it still confuses the world with

God. Pantheism is the logical end of this line of thinking. This thinking is precisely what the

creation narrative was intended to correct against. The Christian Creator God is distinct from

creation.

The Activity of the Will

Creation comes into being by a specific act of God‟s will. In this assertion Moltmann is

cautious and precise. God does not act arbitrarily in making a choice to bring creation into

5. Moltmann, 83.

6. Moltmann, 76.

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existence at some point. No measure of capriciousness ought to be attributed to him. God‟s

freedom of will is not found in the ability to do this or that; he does not simply make up his mind

at one point to bring creatures into being. And yet, creation is an act of decision for there to be

„something instead of nothing‟.7

If the will of God is not an arbitrary decision, like some metaphorical light bulb flicking on

in God‟s mind, then is it some compulsion?8 Indeed, Moltmann assures, the creator is not

hamstrung by his essential resolve to produce life. There is no will that leaps forth in spite of the

best intentions of its keeper to subdue it. God‟s will is not the essence of God; it does not

determine his creative activity. To posit that sort of explanation is to fatally cripple any proper

theology. The watchword is freedom; to put conditions on God or chain him to an undeniable

will is to abandon freedom and simplicity.

Karl Barth felt God‟s inner being was a grand enough on its own for God to dwell without

creation. In this way there was no compulsion or need of God to create; he simply chose to create

instead of the equally viable option of choosing not to create.9 Barth‟s idea, though, comes from

a sort of libertarian view of freedom. God is free in that he can choose one option or another. No

element forces his hand; he can choose to act but is under no obligations.10

Unto himself, he

7. Moltmann, 75.

8. Cp. Augustine City of God 11.24; Augustine Confessions 13.30.45.

9. Moltmann, 82. It was also the way in which Barth saw grace. The choice to create without having to create

meant God’s act was gracious. Moltmann’s conception would then not see grace as dependent on a choice of God

to create but as a characteristic that pre-dates creation. In terms of the fall of man he seems more in line with the

biblical interpretation of Christ’s salvation pre-dating the foundation of the world. God is grace, he does not simply

exercise it.

10. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5, s.v. “Libertarianism.”

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lacks nothing vital to his existence and pleasure. Alongside creation he is equally complete.

Ultimately, though, Moltmann recognizes that this thinking boils down to arbitrariness in the

decision making of God, and he disagrees. But the disagreement is with the entire line of

thinking, not the premises in the argument.

Freedom of the Will in Unity

Freedom for Moltmann is not in a libertarian sense of personal choice, but in the will of

God that eternally expresses the eternal divine character. Aristotle described god as „thought

thinking itself.‟11

In this construction god12

has substance: the substance of thought. The

substance‟s will is to think, resulting in the uniformity of will and substance. There is no division

in Aristotle‟s god. In like matter, there is no division in Moltmann‟s creator. The Aristotelian

construction serves to illustrate the unity that Moltmann finds in the personal Christian God. His

understanding derives from the simple Johannine formula: “God is love.”13

The substance, or in

our nomenclature, essential character, is love; the will is loving. In keeping with Aristotle‟s

locution, Moltmann‟s phrase could read “love loving itself.”14

The greater point to be drawn out

is that God is united in his essential character and will. God is unified in his being towards

creation. The One who is love also wills love – creation is the result.

11

. Aristotle Metaphysics 12.7. Aristotle sounds like a Christian theologian:“We say therefore that God is a

living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God.”

12. I have kept Aristotle’s god diminutive to illustrate that it is not the God of Christian revelation. I have not,

however, neglected capitalize all of the ‘he’ pronouns referring to God for the same reason.

13.Moltmann, 85; I John 4:8.

14. My incidental phrasing is telling of Moltmann’s theology of the Trinity, especially as it relates to creation.

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Freedom that is proper to God is the freedom to be exactly who he is. “God‟s almighty

power is demonstrated only inasmuch as all the operations of that power are determined by his

eternal nature itself. In doing this he is entirely free, and in this freedom he is entirely himself.”15

He does not decide this at one point and that at another point. All decisions find their source in

God‟s love. Decisions are not arbitrary because they are based on an eternal reality; they are not

capricious because they unfailingly correspond to the character of love. A question about

whether God could have chosen not to create is tantamount to asking if God could build a rock

so big he could not lift it. Freedom does not lie in a choice it lies in a character. Creation is the

result of God‟s exercise of freedom in communicating his essential nature through a real act of

his will. Creation is because He is love.

Distinct but Near

Theism‟s basic tenets are firmly upheld in Moltmann‟s theology: God is distinct from

creation while in no way separate. This is achieved by love: “The unity of will and nature in God

can be appropriately grasped through the concept of love. God loves the world with the very

same love which he eternally is.”16

God‟s act of will brings creation forth, distinct from its

creator. God does not emanate creation; there is no pantheism. Yet God is infinitely relational

because the most indissoluble element of his being, love, bonds him to it eternally.

Moltmann, in many respects, re-presents Augustine‟s fundamental understanding. He does,

however, have the benefit of many hundreds of years of added thought and symbols by which to

do it. Augustine treated the same essential question in the late fourth century as Moltmann in the

twenty first: does an eternal God come to create what is in time? How does this Creator relate to

15

. Moltmann, 76.

16. Moltmann, 85.

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something that is contrary to what he is? Moltmann described these things in terms of God‟s will

and essential nature. Augustine comes describes God‟s interaction with time and creation by

giving God a similar unity, the unity of knowledge in the eternal now. In this way Augustine

sketched the core understanding of an eternal God on which Moltmann can mould his loving

Creator.

Saint Augustine

Time as a Measure

Augustine‟s explanation involves a careful parsing of the notion of time. As a man, he is

bound in time. Everything of physical nature is restrained in like manner. Time defines the very

existence of physical things because they are prone to change; time is a measure of change. The

construct of time surrounds humanity on every side and gives definition to corporeal experience.

And yet, it is a no-thing. Beings within the system of time and change have only that vantage

point from which to conceive of God. Yet he is the One who transcends those very constructs!

Humans measure with reference to time and change; but measuring God with those instruments

is like measuring the emotion with a ruler. How can does one measure, or even attempt to grasp,

God without possibility of an adequate frame of reference? What‟s more, the system of time and

change has no fixed reality! Even the constructs to which humans cling for their own definition

of existence are fleeting. What are future and present and past but abstract constructs that only

loosely fit concrete measurements asks Augustine.17

It is in this mix of confusion that

17

. Augustine Confessions 11.23.29-31.

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Augustine‟s most endearing theological qualities become evident: his humility in admitting

ignorance, and his insistence that God is wonderful enough to pursue anyway.18

The Limitations of Time

Undaunted in the faith that God will reveal truth, Augustine develops his understanding of

Creation “based on a sharp distinction between time and timelessness.”19

Time has no solid

existence. It is not a universal construct that applies to happenings because it exists in no real

way whether in the future, present, or past. Time cannot simply measure some motion or stillness

because it does not exist in the future or past. The present provides no fixed state either. Devices

like the sun or the hour glass provide no illuminating clue either. All these devices offer is a

vague sense change relative to themselves; they establish no universal measurement. The key for

Augustine, then, becomes memory.20

The Mind and Memory

18

. Augustine Confessions 11.25.32. Augustine is a refreshing voice in theology, despite his antiquity. In this

short chapter he uses terrific wordplay to convey the enormity of his task. He jokes about how long he’s been

talking about time and quickly submits the futility of his efforts apart from the graciously imparted wisdom of God.

The theme of humility and honest effort to know God is consciously repeated by Augustine throughout these

closing three books of his Confessions. His prayer and praise reflects a hunger for truth beyond academic exercise

– something that may have been lost down through the years but is being re-kindled by men like Geoffrey

Wainwright and William Brackney.

19. Simo Knuuttila, “Time and creation in Augustine,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore

Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001), 106.

20. Augustine Confessions 11.27.34.

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In a characteristic turn, Augustine turns to the human mind for a proper understanding of

the nature of God. What is more, he employs his famous anagogical method to make what is this

into that. The memory of a human being possesses the ability to hold a complete thought at one

time. No one can grasp a happening in time and hold it stable but in his or her mind. In the mind

a wonderful capacity is available that exists only therein. Take a psalm21

or a song;22

the entirety

of the psalm or song exists in the mind of the one who remembers it. In the smallest of intervals

the songstress knows her song from beginning to end, even though she has not yet issued it forth

into the realm of time. In time the song exists in this syllable or that note only so long as it is

being uttered. It disappears into the past as quickly as it materialized from the future. “For when

a song is sung, its sound is heard at the same time. There is not first a formless sound, which

afterward is formed into a song; but just as soon as it has sounded it passes away, and you cannot

find anything of it which you could gather up and shape. … Nor is the sound first in time, for it

is given forth together with the tune.”23

Moltmann construes this as the unity of loving will and

loving essence. In sum, memory transcends the time of universal change and possesses the whole

before it becomes something brought forth in time.

God’s Eternal Knowledge

Augustine‟s Creator can have existence outside of time while maintaining effect in it.

Eternality is not a matter of infinitely regressed time so that one could ask what was God doing

before the world came into being. God was not doing anything that could be measured in any

21

. Augustine Confessions 11.28.38.



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sort of motion or change.24

God was simply in existence with no difference or disunity whatever.

“It is misleading to say even of God that he existed in at a time earlier than the world‟s creation,

for there is no succession in God.”25

God‟s inner being is like the eternal memory of himself and

everything that is. God, “being himself eternal and without beginning… started time and man

from a beginning, and made man in time, as a new act of creation, and yet with no sudden

change of purpose but in accordance with his unchanging and eternal plan.”26

He knows the

entire realm of creation not through observation of the present but through a complete

understanding of past, present, and future.27

His being knows the whole of everything as my

memory knows the whole of my memorized psalm or song. In this way time comes into

existence when what God knows eternally comes forth and becomes formed into what can be

experienced by the corporeal.

Comparison and Contrast of Creation Theologies

Similarities

Eternal Creator

On this point there is similarity between Augustine and Moltmann. Both affirm that there is

no pretext to creation except for that which lies solely in God. Both protect against the notion

that some sort of change occurs within God and that creation is his equal in eternity.28

Augustine

24. Augustine City of God 11.6.

25. Anthony Kenny, A Brief History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 106.



28. Augustine City of God 12.17; cf. Moltmann, 82-84.

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protests Plotinus‟ thesis that “material things represent… an emanated imitation of the higher

sphere.”29

Moltmann makes similar protest against Henry More‟s Newtonian-physics-informed

theology that also results in co-eternality.30

It is on Augustine‟s foundation of God‟s solitary

existence in non-time that Moltmann centers his unity of God‟s will to create with his character

of love. The one who is love has no change in himself to create because the will to create sets

forth time but is eternal in God.

Created Heaven

Augustine and Moltmann are unified in these first principles of creation theology. In

numerous places Moltmann follows Augustine‟s lead. Both understand creation as the initial

process by which God puts everything into existence. God forms his creation into something

intelligible and rational – he makes an order to what is without order.31

Both see heaven and

earth of the Genesis creation account as real creations. Moltmann is quite specific in his

explanation of heaven. Heaven is a created place, and it contains the created ideas of God. From

heaven the potential ideas of God translate into new creation on earth. “Heaven is, as it were, the

preparing and making available of potentialities and potencies of the world‟s creation,

redemption and glorification.”32

It is a critical mistake to equate God and heaven.33

Heaven is the

potential of the creation towards face to face knowledge of God and man, but it is not God in

29

. Knuuttila, 105; cf. Augustine City of God 11.5-6.

30. Moltmann, 155-156.

31. Moltmann, 73; Augustine Confessions 12.8.8, 12.21.30,12.13.16; Augustine City of God 11.34.

32. Moltmann, 166.

33. Moltmann, 175-176.

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itself. A new creation is required of both heaven and earth in order for this eschatology to be

realized.

Augustine takes care to develop a similar understanding of heaven. To be sure, Augustine‟s

cosmology reflects the scientific understanding of the day. His cosmogony, however, finds both

heaven and earth to be creations out of nothing, but created corporeal. Earth is fixed and heaven

sits above it. The „heaven of heavens,‟ distinct from the previous two locations, is where God‟s

presence dwells.

For, clearly, the heaven of heavens which though didst create in the beginning is

in some way an intellectual creature, although in no way coeternal with thee, O

Trinity. Yet it is nonetheless a partaker in thy eternity… it is greatly restrained in

its own mutability and cleaves to thee without any lapse from the time which it

was created, surpassing all the rolling change of time.34

Augustine, and Moltmann after him, is very careful to underscore the necessity of God to

heaven. Heaven is not a created wonderland where all the hardships of life are loosed. Heaven

does not define God, but God defines heaven. Heaven, in the same way as anything created,

comes into existence as an exercise of the free will of God to create. It is in line with God

because it corresponds to who he is, but is separate from God because it proceeds from him.

Practically, both authors can say that real life is in the sight of God, cleaving to him in love.35

Pure comes from the character of God, not the belief in transcendent heaven.36

Heaven must be

created, just as earth, so that the Creator God remains clearly our end and hope.

34

. Augustine Confessions 12.9.9; Isaac Watt’s hymn ‘Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past’ very much reflects theme

of this passage from Augustine.

35. Augustine Confessions 12.15.21. cf.13.19.24-25.

36. Moltmann, 175f. In the section ‘The Modern ‘Criticism of Heaven’ Moltmann makes the case that

Christendom has replaced God with what it desires in heaven. “… God is turned into the fulfillment of the wish

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Differences

Moltmann’s Critiques

Moltmann diverges from Augustine in some aspects of creation theology even though he

consistently maintains the same first principles. His critique is inspired by observing some

practical problems in the way the Christian community, and the world at large, interacts with

creation. Insatiable desire for an excess of material goods has led to a real “ecological crisis,”

that Moltmann says, “is a feeble and also an inaccurate description of the real facts.”37

Worldviews, social theories, and practical government policies are formed around mankind‟s

exploitation of individuals and natural resources. The race finds any and every way to bring

nature and community in line with its will to possess. Moltmann cannot align this imperative of

mankind with the will of the Christian Creator. His critique finds that some elements of

Augustine‟s creation theology may have given rise to this tendency in mankind. Augustine‟s line

is telling:

[M]an, created in thy image and likeness, in the very image and likeness of thee –

that is, having the power of reason and understanding… has been set over all

irrational creatures. And just as there is in his soul one element which controls by

its power of reflection and another which has been made subject so that it should

obey, physically, the woman was made for the man; for, although she had a like

nature of rational intelligence in the mind, still in the sex of her body she should

be similarly subject to the sex of her husband, as the appetite of action is subject

to the deliberation of the mind in order to conceive the rules of right action.38

projections of human beings” (175). When this is the case people fight for what comes from their own desires

instead of submitting to the loving character of God. They choose to dominate instead of communicate.

37. Moltmann, 23.


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If this line, in reference to women, is discomforting to the sensibilities of the casual

modern reader, it is repugnant to the author of The Da Vinci Code. His observation of the

realities this sort of thinking leads to in the church leads to a scathing rebuke of the Church and

the Creator: oppression of femininity comes from the foundational theological understanding of

the organization of creation. His solution is to scrap the first principles that of that Creator God

altogether. Brown‟s story is an apology for the re-introduction of pagan fertility cult its

surrounding sexual-themed rites. Moltmann is not blind to problems in the church and world that

stem from these notions. Far from such a drastic suggestion as Brown has proposed in fiction, his

work strives to re-interpret the elements in light of a renewed examination of the first principles.

Moltmann examines three troublesome areas highlighted in the passage above in order to recast

the Creator. He shows that the Christian God‟s intention for mankind is never human or

ecological domination. Those areas are the image of God in mankind, the relationship of the soul

and body, and the earth as a resting Sabbath community.

Moltmann’s Correctives

Image of God

Moltmann‟s first corrective act regards the function of the Triune God in the image of

God. Augustine thoroughly maintains that Father, Son, and Spirit are all directly involved in

producing and relationally supporting creation.39

The particular aspect that Moltmann has

difficulty with is Augustine‟s emphasis on mind and knowledge. For Augustine the image of

God is a renewal of mind and functioning rationality and it sets mankind above all other

creation.40

“Man has dominion… by the power of reason in his mind by which he perceives „the

39. Augustine Confessions 13.5.6; 13.29.44; Cp. Moltmann, 103.

40. Augustine City of God 11.26, 27; 12.24.

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things of the Spirit of God.‟”41

This superior position of man is a reflection of God‟s superior

position. Man is imbued with the same kind of rational and monarchical capabilities as God,

therefore he must rule like God. In this way of thinking, Moltmann contends, “[i]mago Dei is…

on the one hand a pure analogy of domination, and on the other… a patriarchal analogy to God

the Father.”42

Augustine reduces the doctrine of the image of God to nothing more than the

“theological doctrine of sovereignty.”43

The Trinity is patriarchal or monarchical in nature

because the Spirit is subordinate to the Son and the Son to the Father. When this image is

transferred to mankind the same monarchy is established: everything created becomes

subordinate, and therefore exploitable, to human knowledge.

Moltmann rejects this interpretation of the image of God in mankind and highlights the

community of loving relationships as the hallmark feature of the Trinity. When the rational-

dominative image of God in mankind is exchanged for the true communal understanding of a

loving Trinity the consequence is the same sort of loving community of persons among human

people. Torn down is the Roman ideal of hierarchy. The eastern conception of communal

fellowship in the Trinity , as found Gregory of Nazianzus‟, is much better suited to God.44

The

Trinity as a community of love, not a paradigmatic monarchy, supplies mankind with the


42. Moltmann, 240.

43. Moltmann, 236. Moltmann’s argument runs under the heading ‘Social Likeness to God’ (pp.234-243).

Moltmann cites Augustine’s On the Trinity 11.5, 6 in the assertion that “Augustine considered this social analogy

and rejected it,” favoring, instead, to view the Godhead in monarchical terms and imparting the image of God to

mankind as a reflection of the one God as ruler. Moltmann’s analysis is not altogether unified, in some ways he

sees the flaw of Augustine as viewing the God as a unified One in the transmission of his image. In another way,

however, he sees subordination in the Trinity as the cause of Augustine’s misreading of the imago Dei.

44. Moltmann, 242.

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archetype, capacity, and impetus for loving community. It negates the all consuming urge to

exploit and dominate creation. Fellowship replaces hierarchy, community replaces domination,

and the “sovereignty of the triune God proves to be his sustaining fellowship with his creation

and his people.”45

Body and Soul of Man

A related critique of Moltmann concerns soul and body. Augustine is admittedly Neo-

Platonic.46

Plato‟s man has a three-part soul: the rational, irrational, and spirited.47

A human

being is just when the rational component of his soul gains control over the whole so there is no

disunity in the person. Instead each part is ordered to does what it should for the benefit of the

man as a whole. In this way a man lives well.48

Plato expanded this ideal to society in general

saying:: “…[A] city [was] thought to be just when each of the three natural classes within it did

its own work, and it was thought to be moderate, courageous, and wise.”49

Augustine‟s man is

not far from Plato‟s when he affirms the difference “between souls who give themselves to

things of the mind and others absorbed in things of sense.”50

For Augustine and Plato there is a

division and hierarchy of soul and body.

45

. Moltmann, 241.

46. Kenny, 105.

47. Plato Republic 4.439-440.

48. Plato Republic 5.443.D; 9.586.D.

49. Plato Republic 4.433.A, cp. 9.577.D.


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Moltmann is repulsed by this conception and its consequence. This sort of thinking, when

it informs Christian doctrine, destroys the possibility for proper community. Augustine is not

necessarily the chief exporter of this notion, nor does he develop it as thoroughly as other

philosopher-theologians.51

Nevertheless he does make assertions that fall under Moltmann‟s

critique. It is this sort of thinking, about Trinity and imago Dei, Moltmann claims, that leads to

the practical abuses of power towards individuals and environments:

That is why the relationship of the Spirit-dominated soul to the body corresponds

to God‟s relationship of domination towards the world…. The human being is the

image of God his Lord in that he belongs to himself, controls himself and

disposes over himself…. The rule of the soul over its body is an expression of the

rule of God, and the self-control of the human being is its parable…. The

relationship of heaven to earth in cosmology, the relationship of the soul to the

body in psychology, the relationship of man and woman in anthropology all

correspond to the same order – to mention only the correspondences in the

doctrine of creation…. A world with an „order‟ of this kind can hardly be called a

peaceful one.52

Critical elements of the doctrine of creation must hold together as a unified system to produce

the sort of result proper to loving Christian community. Domination elements in the Trinity, the

image of God, and the inner being of the human being are the germ from which the disease of

domination and exploitation grows.

Moltmann offers to revise the idea of the human being into a fully formed whole. In

referring to Aristotle‟s conception of god as „thought thinking itself‟ I proposed that Moltmann

would maintain the eternality of that God but would recast it as „love loving itself.‟ Truth be told,

Moltmann cannot conceive of a Trinitarian God that loves only itself. Love is an action that

pours forth to creation. The love of God pours forth in his will to create. “The true human

51

. Cf. Moltmann, 248-255.

52. Moltmann, 253-255.

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community is designed to be the imago Trinitatis.”53

But perhaps the phrase „love loving itself‟

can describe the situation of a human beings relationship to him or herself. As the Trinity is

undivided in the love of the persons, so should man be the undivided body and soul of himself.

The body is not dominated by the soul but “the inward and the outward life have made a

covenant.”54

Perichoretic communal relationship is the first principle upon which Moltmann rests

his notion of Trinity, the inner human being, and the greater community of all created things.

„God is love‟ provides the basis for all existence of human life; domination of the body, of

bodies of people, or the earth as a body cannot come from God who is love.

Moltmann‟s critique of the traditional conception of God as monarch and mankind as

dominative master is scathing. His approach has been to identify practical problems and show

where these problems are grounded in theology. This paper has focused on the comparisons and

contrasts of Moltmann and Augustine in the scope of creation theology. Moltmann‟s own

critique has not been so heavily focused on the perceived faults of Augustine. During the course

of this investigation it has become clear that elements of Augustine‟s doctrines may have led to

some of the abuses on the radars of Moltmann and Dan Brown. Turning back Augustine now, we

shall see that his situation warranted his position.

Perspective in Augustine

Augustine’s World

Augustine‟s context provided the same motivation for his theological assertions as

Moltmann‟s observations provide for him our day. Where Moltmann looks at ecological disaster

and oppressive regimes, Augustine looks at drunken orgies and philosophical emptiness. The

53

. Moltmann, 258-259.

54. Moltmann, 260.

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Saint lived in an era of time what was much closer to flesh and blood examples of the pagan

fertility cults. The Confessions are a patchwork of guilty confession and exuberance worship

concerning matters of personal sin in the life of Augustine. Moltmann‟s theology does not tackle

the existence of real sin in the lives of individuals as Augustine knew it. Augustine‟s held upright

Christian life in high esteem and saw that there was great sin attached to the sexual rites of

paganism. Sexual sin was a part of Augustine‟s own life, and his call to abandon flesh should not

be confused with a call to abandon the Creator. Augustine saw the pagan tendency to become

entrenched in everything physical, and consequently the invention of a religious system to justify

it. The Gnostics also found apology for their fleshly debauchery. Augustine heard the call of

scripture in the Gospel and Paul to stand upright before God to avoid this sin. To this end, in

renouncing bondage to the flesh Augustine employed the thoughts of the Platonists. Moltmann is

right to identify the errors of the day and re-evaluate the theological underpinnings, but he must

realize that Augustine was doing the same thing. Augustine demonstrates his sense of balance in

City of God saying,

There is no need, then, in the matter of our sins and faults, to do our Creator the

injustice of laying the blame on the nature of the flesh which is good. … But it is

not good to forsake the good Creator and live by the standard of a created good,

whether a man chooses the standard of the flesh, or of the soul, or of the entire

man, who consists of soul and flesh and hence can be denoted by either term….

For anyone who exalts the soul as the Supreme Good, and censures the nature of

flesh as something evil, is in fact carnal alike in his cult of the soul and in his

revulsion of the flesh, since this attitude is prompted by human folly, not by

divine truth.55

Augustine etches out his own position, the Christian position, and cannot be accused of being

camped with his rival contemporaries.

55

. Augustine City of God 14.5; cf. Augustine Confessions 12.13.16; 13.26.39-41.

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A proper appraisal of Augustine‟s creation theology takes into account the whole.

Augustine‟s context demanded of him a response that met the situation. Personal sin and the

culture-permeating evil from the pagans and the Gnostics demanded a response. Augustine‟s use

of the Platonists‟ ideas went only so far as to show that God was eternally separate from

Creation, against the pagans, and that human beings were responsible to God in how they lived

in good flesh, against the Gnostics. Philosophy is used only so far as it is useful – a handmaiden

to theology.

Augustine’s Church

Augustine was careful to give a real sense of Christian responsibility reject evil. He

would not deny that mankind was given knowledge and responsibility from God to make proper

judgments about what is right and wrong56

, but always as a function of cleaving to the Eternal

and loving God.57

Augustine does not abandon the loving kinship of humans in the image of

God.58

It is the community that provides the basis on which to do the hard work of life the way

God intended.59

Love is the built into Augustine through and through. For Augustine, like

Moltmann, true freedom is not the liberty to do whatever one wants, but in a conscious, practical,

and responsible will that conforms in every way who you are. That is the role of the sons and

daughters of God, to be holy just as he is holy. Renewing the mind in Christ for holiness is hard

56

. Augustine Confessions 13.33.33-34.




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work, but there is no substitute and nothing better. It is in this way that Augustine and Moltmann

begin and finish in the same way.

Conclusion

Dan Brown has brought into the minds and markets of the world a harsh criticism of the

Christian Church. Domination of people and the environment are very real issues facing the

Church and the world at large. But who is to blame? In The Da Vinci Code the solution is to

abandon the Christian Creator in favour of a pagan concept of the principles of male and female.

Jesus is made a man, and Mary Magdalene his wife. This solution does not solve the problems

Brown is quick to point out, it reinforces them! Humans have the tendency to morph doctrine

into what suits their chosen lifestyle – they make God a reflection, and thereby a justification, of

their desire to be gods themselves. Brown‟s approach makes apology for the very thing it

protests, and it is why his book was so appealing to the masses of fallen people. On the surface,

Christian people took issue with the book because its historical inaccuracies and its humanizing

of Jesus. At a core level, however, it offended Christian sensibilities because it praised human

corruption and gave it a cosmic.

A return to pagan principles does nothing to stop evil in the world. Augustine knew that

neither pagan gods nor Gnostic ideals change lives and produce solid community. Embedded

deep in both Moltmann and Augustine‟s creation theology is the knowledge of a Creator who

defies human sinfulness. This God is distinct from creation but has a vested interest. The key is

for men and women to recover the eternal loving God and put away the idols – the reflections of

their own evil desire to possess and oppress – and live as the reflections of God as he truly is. For

this reason the work of the Church is not easy. It involves critical self-assessment, review of

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theology, and most of all, the hard work of being and living in the image of the God who is,

above all, love.

Bibliography

Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by Hippocrates G. Apostle. Bloomington, IL: Indiana UP, 1966.

Augustine. City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1972.

Augustine. Confessions and Enchiridion. Edited and Translated by Albert C. Outler. London: SCM Press,

1955.

Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.

Ehrman, Bart, D. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A historian reveals what we really know about

Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.

Kenny, Anthony. A Brief History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

Knuuttila, Simo. “Time and creation in Augustine.” In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, edited by

Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, 103-115. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.

Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God. Translated by

Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985.

Plato. “Republic.” in Classics of Western Philosophy. 5th ed. Edited by Steven M. Cahn. Cambridge:

Hackett, 1999.

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