The Place of the Soul or the Soul as a Place? Augustine’s Understanding of Soul, Place, and God

Central to Augustine’s theology is his non-physical concept of place: An idea of place or location not controlled by notions of latitude and longitude, of location in three dimensions, or of extension in space. This is a purely non-physical idea of place pertaining above all to God and the soul. Sometimes it seems that Augustine is talking about the souls as itself being a place, an inner space; other times it seems he is talking about the soul as being in a place, a spiritual realm through which it travels in the ascent to God. Phillip Cary reads Augustine as thinking of the soul as a place in itself, an inner space where we may meet God. Carl Vaught gives an elaborate account of the place in which the soul is—a place of three dimensions, but not physical ones. In this paper, I will offer some preliminary considerations that seem to me to support Vaught’s reading, particularly with reference to the Confessiones and the Enarrationes in Psalmos.