Abstract

This paper presents a refreshing new reading of Augustine's view on matter. It argues that Augustine's evolving view on matter from the negative to the positive, from the overly simplistic understanding of matter as something purely physical to a nuanced view of spiritual matter, played an essential role in the Confessions. Matter, in this new understanding, accounts for both space and time. As Augustine matured as a thinker, he saw matter's potentiality also positively as possibility for grace for the embodied self and that which creates the depth of our being. Augustine owed this nuanced view of matter partly to its Plotinian origin but he modified it with his lived experience of faith.