oa Een misverstand. De afstand tussen God en mens in de Soliloquia van Augustinus

Since Courcelle’s investigation of the confessions of Augustine, the idea of Augustine representing a neoplatonic Christian in the earliest period after his conversion, has been widely accepted in literature. Courcelle nevertheless did not deal with the relation of credere and intelligere which is a major theme in later work of Augustine. Analysis of the Soliloquia reveals that even in his earliest work, Augustine breaks away from one of the major issues of neoplatonic philosophy: the opposition between lower end higher knowledge. An obtrusive preference for belief over knowledge can be proved to be present in disregard of the opposition mentioned above.