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Allison Smith
Professor Cassel
Theological Perspectives on Nature
17 November 2015
Flourishing through God

Augustine was a theologian who had a distinct view on how the Bible should be

interpreted; this is referred to as his model. From his model people can learn what his viewpoint

on nature was. The general acceptance of Augustine’s model would encourage people to have

positive attitudes and caring actions towards nature, but the model lacks the ability for people to

understand nature as being intrinsically valuable.

Augustine views the world and its beings as God’s creations, and he believes that God

created people in their physical form (Augustine on Romans 53.1). Because of this, he considers

all things as having been created good since they were created by someone solely good, God

(City of God 12.3). However, humans contain the ability to taint their goodness. This is referred

to as “vice” by Augustine (City of God 12.3). He states, “For to God no evils are hurtful; but only

to natures [humans] mutable and corruptible, though, by the testimony of the vices themselves,

originally good. For were they not good, vices would not hurt them,” (City of God 12.3). In this

excerpt, Augustine says that God’s goodness cannot be harmed by evil. Humans, on the other

hand, are able to act with vices, or choices of immoral actions. When people act in vice, their

goodness is corrupted. Since it can be corrupted, this means good must exist in people. These

vices are judged by God, and God punishes people for their vices (City of God 12.3). As a result

of sin, God placed humans in their mortal body; hence, humans are part of the physical realm

(Augustine on Romans 53.14). These bodies are not perfect since people are able to die and
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become sick. Augustine believes that bodies are perfected during resurrection (Augustine on

Romans 55.21). Augustine writes,

For the body has not yet been remade by that heavenly transformations, as the

spirit has already been changed through the reconciliation of faith, having turned

from its errors to God. Therefore, even those who believe still await that

manifestation to come at the resurrection of the body. This is that fourth stage of

complete and perfect peace and eternal rest, utterly free of contending corruption

and anxious vexation. (Augustine on Romans 55.20-21)

With this, Augustine makes clear that humans are not static in their relationship with God and

do not maintain the same amount of goodness throughout their lives; nature is perceived

differently by Augustine.

Augustine believes that nature was created by God as well; therefore, it was created good

(City of God 12.3). However, Augustine thinks that nature does not have the free will or the

option to sin that humans have (City of God 12.4). Therefore, nature always remains in a

constant state of goodness. Because of this, people should view nature as being good and care for

it because it is good. If this were to be done, people’s actions would be much more courteous and

moral towards nature because they would see God within it.

Augustine’s understanding of nature has been presented, but how else could nature be

perceived by people? Another theologian, Origen, presents his own distinct case concerning

nature. However, to interpret his beliefs, it is necessary to understand the basics of his model.

Origen believes that souls are eternal, and a human is simply a soul within a body (On First

Principles 2.7). All souls started in heaven, and will eventually return to be with God, as a soul,
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in heaven again (On First Principles 6.1). The reason souls fall out of heaven is due to sin. Once

a soul has sinned, it comes to the physical earth where it enters a body (On First Principles 5.2).

From here, the soul can sin further and continue in a downward path to hell, or it can make good

moral decisions, allowing the soul to return in its union with God in heaven. Origen describes,

“Whilst we are in our home in the body, we are away from our home in the Lord;” wherefore

“we are well content to go from our home in the body, and to come to our home with the Lord,”

(On First Principles 50). Origen believes the physical world is seemingly a “safety net” for

souls; it allows souls to exist without being placed in the ultimate pit, hell, but they are not yet

good enough to return to heaven. Consequently, if people buy into this train of thought, they will

view nature as being meaningless. Thus, people would not worry about, care for, or attempt to

conserve the physical world they live in because nature does not matter to them. The physical

world is only temporary to humans as they try to find their way back to heaven. On the other

hand, Augustine argues that free will does not exist in nature (City of God 12.4). Nature is unable

to make decisions of its own. Therefore, nature is incapable of sin or vice. Augustine records

that, “All natures, then, inasmuch as they are, and have therefore a rank and species of their own,

and a kind of internal harmony, are certainly good,” (City of God 12.5). This assertion and the

account of nature’s lack of free will demonstrate that nature exists in a continuous state of good.

If individuals see nature through Augustine’s perspective, they would recognize all of nature

being good rather than seeing it as a safety net to keep out of the Devil’s lair, as in Origen’s

viewpoint. With the idea that nature is good in their minds, people would begin to treat nature in

a careful and loving way. They may even begin to be concerned about its conservation and its

health. Through Augustine’s model, people would view nature as being good since God created

nature to be everlastingly good; therefore nature is good since it was made good.
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Upon first attempting to understand Augustine’s model, people may encounter that it is

conflicting to the Bible. Augustine himself acknowledges the criticisms people have with his

model, and he gives justification to prove that the model does not conflict to the Bible in The

Literal Meaning of Genesis. One of the most conflicting problems Augustine addresses is the

reason why animals or plants that can harm humans exist if nature is good. This can be explained

as the perfecting of virtue. Augustine justifies his point in this way: “Even these creatures,

therefore, could have been harmless if there had been no reason for inflicting fear or punishment

of sinful man or for testing and perfecting his virtue,” (Literal Meaning of Genesis Book Three

15.24). This explanation indicates that nature is good in itself. In spite of its goodness, nature,

when harming people, is a means to bring humans back to their relationship with God; it exists to

test people’s virtue. Augustine further explains that nature would be harmless if people had not

sinned, or if they had not strayed from virtue to begin with. With Augustine’s reasoning, the

existence of thorns and thistles can be explained as well. After people sin, God declares “Thorns

and thistles shall it bring forth to you,” (Literal Meaning of Genesis Book Three 18.27). This

does not mean that God created thorns and thistles because of humans, but that “they will now

begin to come forth in such a way to add to your [humans’] labor,” (Literal Meaning of Genesis

Book Three 18.27). This means that the reason for thorns and thistles is to punish people for their

sin to God; yet, if humans did not sin, thorns and thistles would still be harmless to them.

Another challenge to Augustine’s model is the serpent in Genesis 3:1-6. In this story, the serpent

tempts Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of life. However, Eve knows God does not want her

to eat from this tree and was told she would die if she does eat its fruit (New Jerusalem Bible

Gen. 2.15). The serpent tempts her by saying: “No! You will not die! God knows in fact that the

day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil,”
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(New Jerusalem Bible Gen. 3.1-4). The conflict people have is why the serpent tempted Eve to

sin if the serpent is supposedly good. Augustine again gives a reason to this situation. He

rationalizes, “In the serpent it was the Devil who spoke, using that creature at an instrument,”

(Literal Meaning of Genesis Book Eleven 27.14). Through this rational, the snake is not actually

evil, but the Devil who speaks from within the snake is. In his opinion, the snake is still good.

Augustine also acknowledges the criticism of why creatures of nature would harm one another if

they are good. He clarifies that all creatures “are governed by a hidden plan that rules the beauty

of the world and regulates each according to its kind. Although this truth may be hidden from the

foolish, it is dimly grasped by the good and is as clear as day to the perfect,” (Literal Meaning of

Genesis Book Three 16.25). This suggests that “the perfect,” God, has a plan for nature, and

everything within nature acts according to God’s plan and purpose. Since nature does not have

free will, Augustine believes that “it is ridiculous to condemn the faults of beasts and trees,”

because “these creatures received, at their Creator’s will, an existence fitting them,” (City of God

12.4). In other words, nature exists how it is supposed to according to God’s plan, and nature

should not be considered sinful if it acts according to this plan. Augustine’s model insists that if

God created nature how it was supposed to be, and since he created it good, as all things were

originally created by God, the viewpoint people should have of nature is that it is good. If people

understand this and see that nature is good, they will see that even natural disasters have a

purpose and should not be considered bad; they bring pain to man in order to punish him or to

bring him closer to God through virtue.

While Augustine’s model brings forth the attitudes from people that nature is good in all

ways, it fails to recognize nature for itself. Augustine’s model does not encourage people to look

at nature through a manner which would bring about permanent, positive influences to it. To
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understand how one should truly perceive nature, it is necessary to look at a model suggested by

McFague in Super, Natural Christians: the ecological model. McFague offers this model which

promotes nature as having intrinsic value (McFague 51). Augustine’s model supports the

Medieval model that Christians had; this model is known for how “people looked outward to

find signs of God in nature, rather than inward to find the divine within themselves,” (McFague

53). Augustine’s model allows people to objectify nature as being symbolic of God. McFague’s

ecological model portrays that nature and “each and every creature and entity in the created order

has its own intrinsic distinctiveness, value and penultimate goal: it is not just good for something

else, but in itself and for itself,” (McFague 57). The goal of Augustine’s model is completely

different from that of McFague’s; Augustine’s is symbolic ontology while McFague’s is

objectivity. To help distinguish these two terms, one must know the definition of each term.

McFague simplifies, “symbolic ontology: the assumption that all things participate in the ground

of being and hence symbolize one another due to ontological similarities,” (McFague 51). On the

contrary, objectivity is “’pursuit of a maximally authentic, and hence maximally reliable,

understand of the world around oneself,”’ (qtd. in McFague 75). Nature as seen through

Augustine’s model is nothing more than a way for one to get closer to God and to praise God.

McFague states, while the view of symbolic ontology “brought everything together into an

ordered world, it tended to subsume the lesser under the greater: the things of this world were

either symbols of divine presence or created to benefit human beings,” (McFague 51). In other

words, symbolic ontology isn’t necessarily bad because of how humans treat nature, but it is bad

because of how humans perceive nature through it. Symbolic ontology fails to see nature as

having intrinsic value. Yet, viewing nature through symbolic ontology is better than having no

relationship with nature. McFague’s ecological model is a better way for humans to view nature,
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though. McFague’s model not only proposes a way for one to see nature as good through God,

but it also allows people to see the worth nature has independently from God; it allows for

people to understand nature through nature’s own means. This view is important because it

would allow humans to recognize that nature has its own purposes and its own life outside of a

spiritual realm. Therefore, people would feel that it is necessary to care for nature and to preserve

it not only because it manifests God, but also because nature has a right to live for its own

existence. Furthermore, if people with Augustine’s model lose their relationship with God,

nature would have no meaning because nature is only good by means of God. Whereas if people

with McFague’s model lose their relationship with God, nature still has a value through its own

existence. Due to this, Augustine’s model is good in the sense that it allows people to care for

nature, but it fails to let people see the intrinsic worth of nature their relationship with God were

to diminish.

While the premises of Augustine’s model promote attitudes and actions from humans that

are positive and beneficial to nature, it fails to encourage the correct motivation behind their

attitudes and actions. Instead, through Augustine’s model, people are caring and perform

compassionate actions towards nature because they are working to strengthen their relationship

with God. This model allows the flourishment of nature only through the manifestation of God in

nature. If God was not manifested in nature, people would not consider it good. Therefore, they

would not treat it kindly or care for it. Ultimately, nature is treated well with the acceptance of

Augustine’s model; however, the question people must ask themselves is, “Should nature’s

existence only be considered good because God is manifested through it?"

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Works Cited
Augustine on Romans: Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans; Unfinished Commentary on

the Epistle to the Romans. Texts and Translations by Paula Fredriksen Landes. Texts and

Translations 23; Early Christian Literature Series 6. Chico, California: Scholars Press,

1982.

Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen,

Parts First and Second. Ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, D.D. Amer. ed. Grand Rapids: WM. B.

Eerdmans, 1885. Vol. 4 of Ante-Nicene Fathers. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Web. 11 Nov. 2015. <http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.i.html>.

McFague, Sallie. Super, Natural Christians. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1997. Print.

The New Jerusalem Bible. Ed. Henry Wansbrough. Reader's ed. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Print. New Jerusalem Bible.

St. Augustine's: City of God and Christian Doctrine. Ed. Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. Grand

Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans, 1886. Vol. 2 of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-

Nicene Father of the Christian Church. Christians Classics Ethereal Library. Web. 11

Nov. 2015.

Taylor, John Hammond, S.J., trans. St. Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Ed. Johannes

Quasten, Walter J. Burghardt, and Thomas Comerford Lawler. Vol. 1. New York:

Newman, 1982. Print. Ancient Christian Writers 41.