Animated Expressions of Divine Wisdom

In Augustine’s Platonic theism, beings made in God’s image have the capacity to see themselves as God sees them — not as insignificant assemblages of particulars in space and time, whose value must be arbitrarily assigned, but as animated expressions of divine wisdom…[Augustine] sees himself disfigured over time because he lacks the unified view God has of him in eternity. When God sees Augustine, God represents him as perfected, and if Augustine could see himself through God’s eyes, he would have no difficulty making his life out to be significant and intelligible.

—James Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (1992)