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s2smodern

I am simultaneously reading Husserl and Augustine, and some secondary literature on Augustine.  I have also been reading Dallas Willard, who argues that Husserl was not only a realist at the beginning of his career, but remained one throughout his life.  So there are many things bouncing around my mind these days.

Today, in reading Augustine, I discovered this in his On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis:

 "Knowledge, after all, cannot arise unless it is preceded by objects to be known; and these again are first in the Word through which all things were made (Jn 1:3), before they are in all the things that have been made." (IV.32.49)

Augustine has written the following a little earlier:

"So without bringing into existence yet any of the things which he made, he has all things primordially in himself in the same manner as he is. After all, he would not make them unless he knew them before he made them; nor would he know them unless he saw them; nor would he see them unless he had them with him; and he would not have with him things that had not yet been made except in the manner in which he himself is not made."

That is: God "has" all things in himself (perhaps in his mind), which he "later" brings into being.  For how could God make something which he did not in some sense know?  

All things that have come into being were known by God before they were brought into being.  These things were first "in the Word."