Augustine and Creation

In Augustine’s thought creation takes the place of Plotinian emanation. God’s creation is not a necessary effusion of his being, but a free and sovereign act. Besides being free, God's creation is ex nihilo, out of nothing, rather than, as in Plato’s Timaeus, a reworking of a preexistent material reality. Since matter is itself God’s creation, Augustine maintains that matter itself is not bad or evil. It is true that it is bad to place more value on the material and visible than on the nonphysical and invisible. God is more important than God’s creation. However, that creation is material is not in itself a bad thing. Thus Augustine moves away from the Platonic view that evil is the result of the immaterial soul’s being embodied.—Evans, A History of Western Philosophy, 142