“Human beings—along with other entities on earth—are ineluctably place-bound. More even than earthlings, we are placelings, and our very perceptual apparatus, our sensing body, reflects the kinds of places we inhabit. – Edward S. Casey, “How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena”

“The power of place will be remarkable” – Aristotle, Physics, Book IV

“Some of our works are indeed good, thanks to your Gift, but they will not last forever, and when they are done we hope that we shall rest in your immense holiness. But you, the supreme Good, need no other good and are eternally at rest, because you yourself are your rest.” – Augustine, Confessions 13.38.53; tr. Boulding

In this brief entry I reflect, via a focus on “place,” on Augustine’s presentation of the Spirit in the creation account of Genesis 1 (conf. 13.4.5-9.10), which he reads as directly enmeshed with the Spirit’s work in the heart of the human person, the culmination of God’s creation on the sixth day.

As Augustine ramps up to his spiritual interpretation of creation in Book XIII, he discusses the question of why God created at all, explaining that it was out of God’s sheer goodness not any need or lack in God’s self that God created. In this context, he discusses the role of God’s Spirit in creation, beginning with scripture’s description of the Spirit’s positionality: “Your good Spirit hung poised above the waters” (conf. 13.4.5; quoting Gen 1:2). Lest his reader understand the spirit’s resting spatially or in terms of physical necessity, Augustine clarifies that “the waters did not support him”, and furthermore, when the Spirit is said elsewhere in scripture to “rest upon people,” in such cases the Spirit is rather to be understood as causing such people to “rest in himself” (13.4.5).

In these comments, we see already Augustine’s overlapping treatment of the Spirit’s position in creation, and the believer’s position in relation to the Spirit, which becomes even more explicit as Augustine turns to address God directly, saying: “Rather did your unassailable, immutable will, sufficient in itself unto itself, brood over the life you had made, over the creature for which life is not the same as beatitude…” (13.4.5).

As he continues his discussion of scripture’s spatial description of the Spirit in Genesis 1, he must now deal with the issue presented by the order in which the Spirit is listed within the creation account; not only is the Spirit mentioned after the Father and the Son, but the Spirit is also mentioned after heaven, the invisible unorganized earth, and the darkness over the deep. Did the Spirit have to be described as hovering, Augustine asks? If that were the case, and it seems that for Augustine, it is, the Spirit could not be said to hover over the Father or the Son, and thus of necessity the Spirit had to be described as hovering over some other objects.

Augustine now turns to the apostle Paul for assistance with this issue, and particularly his description of the Spirit in Rom 5:5: “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Since the Spirit is God’s Love, Augustine tells us, he is therefore described as hovering about the waters at creation, and here again the depths of the human heart are transposed over the formless unorganized earth and the darkness over the deep. Furthermore, here, Augustine takes on “place” head-on, saying:

To whom should I speak, and how express myself, about the passion that drags us headlong into the deep, and the charity that uplifts us through the Spirit, who hovered over the waters? To whom should I say this, and in what terms? These are not literally places, into which we plunge and from which we emerge: what could seem more place-like than they, yet what is in reality more different? They are movements of the heart, they are two loves. One is the uncleanness of our own spirit, which like a flood-tide sweeps us down, in love with restless cares; the other is the holiness of your Spirit, which bears us upward in a love for peace beyond all care, that our hearts may be lifted up in you, to where your spirit is poised above the waters, so that once our soul has crossed over those waters on which there is no reliance we may reach all-surpassing rest (13.7.8).

This is a very rich, vivid description of these two movements of the heart, which aids the reader precisely because it locates them in a specific place, the unformed waters of the creation account, even if figuratively. The human soul is tossed about the deep waves of these waters as long as it loves “restless cares,” but when the Holy Spirit’s love is poured into our hearts, the soul can cross over the waters and is born upward to the hovering Spirit where it finds rest.

Augustine then returns to the question of why the Spirit alone of the three Trinitarian persons is said to be poised above the waters “as though he were in a place, when it is no place; and why only of him who alone is said to be your Gift” (13.9.10; quoting Acts 2:38). He answers his question this way: “Because, I think, in your Gift we find rest, and there we enjoy you. Our true place is where we find rest” (13.9.10). In a brilliant reading of the hovering Spirit in Gen 1:2, Augustine plays with the language of space and place to reflect on the upward journey and final destination of the rightly ordered human heart.