“This heaven which I see and the earth which I tread underfoot, from which comes this earth that I carry – you made” (conf. 12.2.2; translation mine). 

Here Augustine is interpreting Genesis 1:1-2, and it is noteworthy that he situates himself at the heart of the subject matter that he is interpreting. He neither holds Scripture at arm’s length, nor does he hold it up as a mirror to his previously established convictions – he is the mere creature of the God whom Scripture proclaims as the author of creation. He thus comes to it as someone expecting to be transformed. 

This may not sound revolutionary, but in a twenty-first century Western liberal context, torn between the unquestionable facts of science on the one hand, and the multiplication of (often warring) subjectivities on the other hand, it should be heard as such. Augustine’s interpretive practice brings into question both sides of the dichotomy. On the one hand, the creation of which Augustine is a part is in its entirety being formed by and conformed to the God who made it. Augustine interprets the earth of verse 1 (and explicated in verse 2) as unformed matter – a ‘nothing something’ (conf. 12.6.6) that is only capable of being formed, and whose formation is narrated in the following verses. There are no unquestionable facts, or inert objects, left untouched by God’s formation of the mutable creation. 

On the other hand, Augustine as subject is himself caught up in this divine formation, whose goal is the unity of the heavenly city, which cleaves to God in perpetual formation, enjoying unalloyed blessedness and knowledge of God face to face (conf. 12.11.12). Augustine interprets the ‘heaven’ of Gen 1:1 as referring to this heavenly city – intellectual creation or the angels (conf. 12.9.9). But such blessedness is also the goal of eschatological redemption, in which all will enjoy God in common. The oneness of this vision – that creation is ultimately one as it adheres to the one Truth – is unthinkable in the context of the fragmented and self-defined identities of Western postmodernity. Also unthinkable is the mutuality entailed – that my enjoyment of God is only what it is because of yours, or more simply, that I am who I am because you are who you are, and vice versa. A God enjoyed by me at the expense of others (a private god) is not the God of Augustine’s Genesis. 

Oneness and mutuality are together captured by Augustine’s repeated refrain in multiple contexts that the truth, the good, or – in the present context – true interpretation, is “common to all” (communis omnibus) (cf. conf. 12.25.34). This insight is at the root of his rethinking of the interpretive endeavour. In a modern context, the line is drawn between interpreter as subject and text as interpreted object. The subject/object split haunts biblical interpretation in particular, leading either to the search for objective meaning, which brackets readerly subjectivity, or to a multiplicity of incommensurable subjective readings, which take leave of the idea of objective meaning as a chimera.  

Augustine invites us to rethink this split. Apparently in keeping with a modern pursuit of objective meaning, Augustine shows deference to Moses as (presumed) author of Genesis (conf. 12.23.32). But he is not after the contents of Moses’ mind as something which can be excavated. He is after the truth that he trusts Moses has discerned. On the other hand, apparently in keeping with a postmodern perspectivalism, he recognises the possibility of many true interpretations, not all of which are necessarily what Moses had in mind (conf. 12.32.43). 

At odds with both modern and postmodern sensibilities, he positions himself alongside Moses as a fellow seeker of the truth that they can contemplate in common. Belonging to neither as private possession, it can be enjoyed by each, and by each differently while remaining one Truth. Rather than containing a fixed meaning, Moses’ words act as prompts for readers to contemplate the truth, each in their own way. The truth so contemplated is not an object to be disinterestedly regarded by interpreter as subject, but is that to which the interpreting subject is being conformed. As that in which multiple subjects participate it is both objective and subjective: accessible to all, and actively engaging of the interpreters who access it. Because of their diverse proximate contexts, different interpreters are likely to offer interpretations that (if true) are different inflections of the one truth. Augustine and Moses may see the truth in common, but differently. 

Susannah Ticciati is the author of Job and the Disruption of Identity: Reading Beyond Barth, A New Apophaticism: Augustine and the Redemption of Signs, and Reading Augustine: On Signs, Christ, Truth and the Interpretation of Scripture.