Retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation by Gavin Ortlund
In Gavin Ortlund’s 2020 book, Retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation (IVP, 2020), we have a stimulating work that somewhat defies easy categorisation. It is not really a work of doctrine, concentrating on the doctrine of creation in general as a positive account of that locus, nor is it a work purely of historical theology which seeks only to outline Augustine’s thought on Creation. Rather, as Ortlund notes in the title, his book represents a work in theological retrieval: the attempt to learn from theologians of the past about how we might do theology in our own time.
For Ortlund this act of retrieval is necessary, both with regard to the doctrine of creation in general, and in relation to the role of creation in Augustine’s thought. The great western theologian represents an incredibly fecund theological partner, whose views have decidedly shaped almost all subsequent theology in the Christian West, but the attempt to retrieve his thought theologically is helpful because of the perceived width and depth of Augustine’s thinking on creation as a doctrinal locus. By comparison, and motivating the work, Ortlund argues that, for most modern evangelicals, the doctrine of Creation has been greatly weakened in its theological role by a tendency to focus only on issues surrounding science and faith and their interaction in relation to the accounts of Genesis 1 and 2. As Ortlund writes in his introduction,
“Creation is a frequently underdeveloped, atrophied doctrine. John Webster has spoken of the “cramping effects” that modernity imposes on theology, identifying two particular loci where the damage can be seen: the Trinity and the doctrine of creation. Often Christians treat the doctrine of creation as a kind of prolegomenon to theology rather than a theological topic in its own right. . . . When we do engage the theology of creation more directly, interest is often narrowly focused on questions springing from science-faith dialogue: What is the nature of the days in Genesis 1? Are the Adam and Eve of Genesis 2–3 historical figures? Was there a historical fall, and how do we understand this event in relation to the claims of evolutionary science?“
In seeking to engage and remedy this deficiency, Ortlund shows how Augustine provides a helpful figure with which to interact both because of his interest in how the contemporary knowledge of his day about the physical world interacted with the teaching of Scripture but also because Augustine’s thought precedes the rise of modern science by more than a thousand years, and thus provides a perspective helpfully removed from our own temporal and cultural moment. Ortlund’s book certainly includes discussion of issues of science and faith in the light of Augustine’s work, but really does go onto show the width of Augustine’s thought on creation, and its particular significance for Augustine as one who reverted to the Christian faith after a decade spend in Manichaeism. One can only be impressed by theological importance for Augustine, well brought out by Ortlund, of a Christian grasp of how a right understanding of creation touches on the God-world relation, God’s character and nature, Christian enjoyment of creation and Christian virtue and ethical life.
The great wisdom of this book by Ortlund is not that it encourages us to adopt Augustine’s views totaliter (a rather unlikely option for the modern Christian) or even to agree with the direction of Ortlund in his own theological suggestions (though certainly many contain great wisdom) but in the whole general manner of approach, in which as C.S. Lewis put it “the clean sea breeze” of the Christian past may refresh our minds and stimulate our own theologising about important Christian doctrines, not least by thinking theologically about creation with the help of a great doctor of the Church.
