Is God a 'Being' in St. Augustine? - by Father Robert Dodaro

Is God a Being in St. Augustine? - Father Robert Dodaro

Augustine does not call God a Being. Augustine however refers to God as Idipsum, which we might translate Being-Itself. He writes about this concept in several texts. This one is from his Commentary on Psalm 121:

What is Idipsum? It is simply Idipsum, Being-Itself. How can I say anything about it, except that it is Being-Itself? Grasp it if you can, brothers and sisters, for whatever else I may say, I shall not have defined Being-Itself. All the same, let us attempt to direct the gaze of our minds, to steer our feeble intelligence, to thinking about Being-Itself, making use of certain words and meanings that have some affinity with it.

What is Being-Itself? That which always exists unchangingly, which is not now one thing, now another. What is Being-Itself, Absolute Being, the Self-Same? That which is. What is That Which Is? The eternal, for anything that is constantly changing does not truly exist, because it does not abide – not that it is entirely nonexistent, but it does not exist in the highest sense.

And what is That Which Is if not he, who, when he wished to give Moses his mission, said to him, I Am Who I Am …This is Being-Itself, the Self-Same: I Am Who Am, He Who Is has sent me to you.

You cannot take it in, for this is too much to understand, too much to grasp. Hold on instead to what he who you cannot understand became for you. Hold onto the flesh of Christ … Hold on to what Christ became for you, because Christ himself, even Christ, is rightly understood by this name, I Am Who I Am, inasmuch as he is the form of God. In that nature wherein he deemed it no robbery to be God’s equal, there he is Being-Itself. But that you might participate in Being-Itself, he first of all became a participant in what you are, the Word was made flesh (Jn. 1.14) so that flesh might participate in the Word.