Resting, moving, loving:
Access to the self according to Saint Augustine
Public lecture – May 26, 2010 – University of Chicago, The Divinity School
Jean-Luc Marion
I. Creation and the question of the self
The rather obvious, although often overlooked, structure of the Confessiones, suggests strongly that
the questions about his own self, which upset saint Augustine in the first nine books, find some
universal answers either from conceptual analysis (in Book X) or from biblical grounds (in Books
XI-XIII). I would like to show – or at least to suggest very briefly – how the doctrine of creation
(including the «heaven of the heavens» and of creation de nihilo) contribute to define the place
where, or more exactly from where, confessio can be lifted up and the self can become accessible to
itself. But, in fact, it becomes possible to praise God as God only if God himself opens the place
and gives the time for it. And where would that be except in God himself?So, the creature’s place is
not found in itself, but is always found in God, such that the place for confessio of God is
determined by and in God, to the point that creation consists only in the opening of the place of
confessio. It is therefore a universal rule. What remains for us to understand how that universal rule
is specified in the case of man.
II. The human exception
The story of creation contains, on the sixth day and in the case of man, several peculiar features. If
we admit the story as told in the Vetus Latina, each created thing was created according to its kind,
secundum genus suum, that is, in conformity with itself and with itself alone. This version even
emphasizes this self-identity of the individuation by kind when it adds secundum similitudinem
(Genesis 1:11); indeed, when it insists secundum suam similitudinem (Genesis 1; 11, 12). The
created thing resembles itself. In other words, the work of creation, which separates and
distinguishes in order to open space (thus setting the conditions for the benediction of the created by
God, as well as those for the praise of God by the created), requires a reference of each creature to
itself, such that it resembles nothing other than its own kind, its own species, its own aspect
(species) – in short, nothing other than itself in its ultimate essence. But, this is not how it is in the
case of the creation of man.
First, because in the story of his creation, the mention of a kind (or of a species) disappears; this is
to say that there is no reference of this created thing to its own proper essence:
“Why then did he not also say with regard to man: ‘let us make man in our image and resemblance
according to his kind,’ since it is obvious that even man reproduces” [according to his kind]?[1]
This modification is not about some threat of no longer being able to reproduce (for example, as a
consequence of the first sin), since what immediately follows is the blessing of his fruitfulness
(Genesis 1:28: “Increase and multiply”). The only explanation would come from the appearance of
Eve, who shows up on the margins and as an exception to the kind (in the sense of gender) of the
primordial man, so to speak. But now, how does one explain this liberty taken with regard to the
strict acceptation of the kind [genus]?
In order to understand this first peculiarity of the story of the creation of man (and woman), a
second, still more explicit one should be considered. In Genesis 1, 26, creation no longer happens
according to the resemblance of the creature to itself (“secundum suam similitudinem”), but
according to its resemblance to an other besides itself – and, moreover, to an other of maximum
alterity, since it is a reference to God:
...no longer according to a kind, as if we imitated some precedent nearby or lived under the
authority of some man better [than us]. For you did not say: “Let man be according to his kind,”
but: “Let us make man in our image and resemblance,” so that we might prove by trial what your
will is.[2]
Not only does the phrase ad similitudinem nostram literally contradict secundum suam
similitudinem, but it is also substituted for kind (or species), that is to say, it holds the place, in the
case of man, of any and every definition:
You did not say according to its kind [ours], but according to the image and resemblance [yours].[3]
Hence, this paradoxical consequence: man constitutes a creature par excellence and is even
particularly excellent, precisely because he does not have a kind nor a species proper to him, and
therefore does not have a definition that would appropriate him to himself. Man is defined by the
very fact that he remains without definition, an animal properly without property.
And this is not just an incidental remark; it deals with what saint Augustine does not hesitate to
name a mystery, in the sense of the magna quaestio that man becomes for himself and of a
sacrament by which God blesses man by creating him:
But what is this and what is this mystery? [...] I would say, our God, who created us in your image, I
would say that you wanted to grant properly to man the gift of your blessing ?[4]
Saint Augustine hesitates before this conclusion since the issue remains subtle: God also
encouraged the animals to reproduce; he even blessed the fish of the sea (Genesis 1, 22). What then
is particular to the blessing of fruitfulness given to man? No doubt precisely the fact that man alone
got a blessing of fruitfulness from God, but he did not receive a kind or species according to which
he could naturally reproduce – reproduce, as it were, himself from himself. This would mean that, if
man propagates himself over the entire earth to the point of dominating it, he owes this not to his
kind or species (which he does not have), nor to his essence (which remains unknown), but to a
direct and ongoing blessing from God. In what does this blessing consist? Obviously in substituting
for kind and species the reference ad imaginem et similitudinem nostrum, in order to hold the place
of the absent essence. Man does not increase according to his kind, his species or his essence – that
is to say according to himself, but according to a blessing coming from elsewhere, which sets him
up to be in the resemblance and the image of an other than himself, God. Man does not develop by
some essential and internal law, but solely by receiving God’s blessing, a blessing that consist only
in being disposed according to the image and resemblance toward God. Man has no proper essence,
but refers himself to an other than himself, an other who, more intimate to him than himself (than
his lacking essence), plays for him the role of essence by proxy.
For image, by definition and essentially, can neither provide an essence nor a definition obtained by
replicating, reproducing and imitating an other essence or definition – all the more so in this case
since the image deals with that for which man does not, by principle, have means to sketch the
slightest bit of image: God. Here, and in the case of man more than in that of any other creature, the
image remains impracticable; consequently, it has to be thought about by starting from the
resemblance (similitudo). Obviously man does not bear the image of God as God the Son bears it
toward God the Father through the connection of the Spirit; for only the Son is the image of the
Father while man is found only in the image of God:
Because this image of God [man] was not absolutely equal to him, since not born of him but created
by him, so, to make this point clear, this image is image inasmuch as to the image, that is, it is not
equal to it in parity of God and man, but approaches it by some resemblance. It does not draw near
toward God by degrees of place, but by resemblance toward him and it grows apart by dissemblance
away from him.[5]
It is not a matter of keeping or losing the image of God as a content (as if created in the image of
God can count as a definition, categorizing him as rational animal, animal endowed with language
or animal that laughs), but of referring the image toward that to which it hears the resemblance. The
image is not compared to a model, like a visible reproduction is to another visible accessible
elsewhere: the image is borne only by that which refers itself across the resemblance unto an
original that remains as such invisible, and only in the measure to which it so refers itself. The
image consists only in the tension of referring itself to that to which it means to resemble. It appears
only as this movement toward, and only this intentio ad maintains the resemblance. Man bears the
image of God (instead of place or kind, species or essence) inasmuch as he resembles Him. But he
cannot, except absurdly, claim to resemble him as a visible image resembles a visible model, indeed
as an intelligible image resembles an intelligible model. This would seem to be the illusion of the
Neo-platonists: establishing a positive resemblance, one measurable by intervals, between the terms
of the resemblance. It must be that man resembles God otherwise – which means both in another
way and by remaining in alterity, that is as ‘other’.
So as to avoid in advance all errors, one thing alone is needed: that the same item be God and man, God
toward which going goes, man through whom going goes. [or: There is only one road, well secured against
going astray, and this road is provided by one who is himself both God and man. As God, he is the goal; as
man, he is the way].[6]
This means that one must go toward the image through the resemblance: man bears the image of
God up to the point that he gives up any resemblance to himself (ad suum genus, ad suam
similitudinem) for the sake of resembling nothing - at least nothing of which he could have any
idea, i.e. any species. For man does not resemble God by resembling something visible or
intelligible, but by resembling nothing visible or intelligible – in short, by resembling no image,
especially not some so-called imago of God, but in bearing the resemblance of the style of God.
Man is a God, like a Cezanne is a Cezanne, a Poussin a Poussin – without anything behind or beside
them, that would be Cezanne or Poussin, yet visible as themselves apart of the painting. No, the
paintings of Poussin or Cezanne appear as such, without any other visible mark or signature besides
them, but only as paintings bearing all over the inimitable style of Cezanne or Poussin. In this sense,
man is a God. He appears as God-made, as a God insofar as he endorses bearing God’s style, and
lets his own particular features be subdued, so that its provenance might appear. Man is a God only
as he returns from where he comes, to his most intimate other. …
NOTES
[1] De Genesi ad litteram III, 12, 20: Cur ergo et de homine non ita dictum est “Faciamus hominem
ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram secunduin genus”, cum et hominis propago manifesta est ?
[2] Conf. XIII, 22, 32: ... non jam secundum genus, tanquam imitantes praecedentem proximum,
nec ex hominis melioris auctoritate viventes. Neque enim dixisti: “Fiat homo secundum genus,”
sed: “Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similtudinem nostram,” ut nos probemus, quae sit
voluntas tua.
[3] Conf. XIII, 22, 32: Nec dicis secundum genus, sed ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram.
[4] Conf. XIII, 24, 35: Sed quid est hoc et quale mysterium est? [...] Dicerem te, Deus noster, qui
nos ad imaginem tuam creasti, dicerem te hoc donum benedictionis homini proprie voluisse largiri.
[5] Trin. VII, 6: Sed quia non omnino aequalis fiebat illa imago Dei tanquam non ab illo nata, sed
ab illo creata, hujus rei significandae causa, ita imago est ut ad imaginem sit: id est, non aequaliter
parilitate, sed quadam similituine accedit. Non enim locorum intervallis, sed similitudine acceditur
ad Deum, et dissimilitudine rededitur ab eo.
[6] civ. Dei XI, 2: Sola est autem adversus omnes errores via munitissima, ut idem ipse sit Deus et
homo; quo itur Deus, qua itur homo.