In sol. Augustine and ratio, his reason or his soul, confront each other. Several years later, in uera rel. Augustine identifies three cardinal vices: uoluptas, curiositas, and superbia. This threefold concupiscence probably derives from Porphyry’s teaching, which he in turn had received from Plato’s Republic, concerning the threefold division of the soul. Lust, curiosity, and pride correspond to the appetitive, rational, and thumetic aspects of the soul. According to Augustine, 1 John 2:15-16 is an admonition against these three vices. In Matth 4:1-11 the vices correspond to the devil’s three temptations, which Jesus faced at the beginning of his public ministry. The structure of sol. 1 10.17 indicates that ratio is confronting Augustine with the same deadly desires: superbia, curiositas, and uoluptas. At Cassiciacum Augustine communicates these three concepts, but without the precise vocabulary and logical systematization which will be supplied later by 1 John 2:15-16 and Matth 4:1-11 as his thought develops in a theological context. Augustine first presented these three deadly desires in the sol. As temptations during his own life. This took place in 387 at Cassiciacum after his conversion in the garden but before his baptism in Milan. Next, in uera rel. Augustine describes the temptations as those of Jesus as well, the only difference being that Jesus was tempted immediately after his baptism rather than before as Augustine was. Finally, Jesus’ experience and Augustine’s subsequent experience are presented as the universal temptation of all humankind. Curiosity is a major psychological force in two African autobiographical works, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius and the conf. of Augustine. Never explicitly mentioned in sol., curiositas is implied in the sentence where ratio tempts Augustine: 'For this concerns the health of your eyes’.

Augustine is acknowledged by Malebranche as the source of his occasionalism and he appropriates the architect analogy of Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram (4.22). Augustine’s analogy, however, is not a move toward occasionalism, but a response to Platos claim in the Timaeus (41 A) that the cosmos can be destroyed and is only preserved by divine providence. The heterological nature of the architect image for creation shows that, far from arguing for occasionalism, Augustine is concerned to avoid the cosmogonically fallacious confusion of divine agency and natural cause.

In this contribution it will be demonstrated, on the basis of two treatises in St Augustine’s In lohannis euangelium tractatus centum viginti quatuor, that Augustine, precursor of the later negative theology, sees the awareness of human consciousness as the prelude to the realisation that God is incomprehensible. His reflections on human consciousness as the seat of God, in their turn, form the prelude to reflections on two types of inadequacy of human intelligence. In Tractatus 1 he first reduces this inadequacy to the need people feel to see God as all too human, and exactly therefore refuse to appreciate Him as the Incomprehensible One. He regards this as reprehensible and he attributes this attempt to certain heresies. In addition the cognitive capacity of inspired men like St John is inadequate, because they too are caught in the limitations of the concrete dimensions of time and space inherent in their existence on earth. They are not reprehensible, however. Augustine also expands the awareness of God’s incomprehensibility by emphasizing that God cannot possibly be grasped conceptually by means of words. He takes great pains to evoke some kind of consciousness of God as the Word, by making use of comparisons, but these attempts are structurally embedded in reflections on the incomprehensibility of God, precisely as the Word, not to be compared with a human, spoken, transient word. Nevertheless, in accordance with a principle, already recognized in De ordine, Augustine emphasizes that, on the authority of St John however incomprehensible the Word that is God may be for him, the Word made flesh, Who dwelt among us, is very near indeed. Also in Tractatus I and II of In lohannis euangelium tractatus Augustine tries to find a language evoking God’s incomprehensibility by reminding us that the experience of God is an experience that is in perfect contrast with a sensual experience; it is a counter-experience that cannot possibly be grasped in concepts. At the same time he tries to see the Incarnation as an appeal to become as humble as God Himself.

Although Augustine is rarely known as somebody who has written mystagogical catecheses (even if his Sermons for Easter are of that nature), one has to con elude that, indeed, for him mystagogy is far broader and that his entire oeuvre is mystagogical, his commentaries on Genesis as much as De Trinitate, the Confessions, the Homelies on the first Epistle of St. John... and the mystery which he suggests to discover is nothing but Christ, who invites the reader to walk on the Easter route of love.

St. Augustine expounds his theory of intellectual vision in book XII of The literal meaning of Genesis. This involves the sight of the mind's eye which operates in the upper echelon of the human soul. My paper deals with how intellectual vision relates to Augustine’s doctrine of imago Dei, or his interpretation of the verses Genesis 1:27: God created man in his own image. The imago Dei, located in every human intellect, progressively acquires a resemblance to God by gathering knowledge from divine Light. This doctrine furnishes the potential of a divine, epistemological experience in the form of a uisio intellectualis.