Stan Rosenberg: The Beginning of Privation in Augustine’s Later Commentaries on Genesis

The notion of evil as a privatio boni is central to Augustine’s thought and leads him to formulate a host of theological innovations affecting diverse doctrinal commitments.  These are disparate yet interconnected because they are connected by this strand of interpretation about the nature of evil and impacts inter alia: political theology, hermeneutics, theological anthropology, ecclesiology,  and atonement. The notion of evil as a privatio is arguably one of the fundamental cornerstone’s of an Augustinian system yet many working in the shadow of Augustine’s thought and tradition often overlook this crucial position.  It is not uncommon to find theologians who accept or reject key Augustinian doctrines without due consideration of the validity of this means of posititing and analyzing the problem and nature of evil.  While it is a doctrine that is generally understood by the mainstream of Augustine and Thomistic scholars, it get’s seemingly little attention and is in fact often widely misunderstood more generally by other theologians and philosophers.  Central to his cosmology, it is important to examine precisely how it features in the commentaries on Genesis and the completed commentary in particular, de Genesi ad litteram. There is further room to examine his understanding of this mechanism, particularly as it relates to the non-human creation. Hence, this paper will evaluate the ways in which Augustine uses his later commentaries on Genesis to understand the impact of privation on the physical and biological worlds apart from human free will and moral activity.