Augustine is nothing if not fascinating.  Over the years, various folks (theistic evolutionists among them), have turned to Augustine.  Most of us would like to have Augustine "on our side," if possible.  As I work on my own Augustine book, I have attempted to explore some of these issues.  In an interesting turn, Etienne Gilson somewhat turns the tables on the attempt to bring Augustine to the defense of Darwinism (unnamed).  Here is what Gilson writes:

Concerning Augustine's notion of "seminal reasons" (which for Augustine permeate/mark all of created order): "Far from being called upon to explain the appearance of something new, as would be the case with creative evolution, they serve to prove that whatever appears to be new is really not so, and that in spite of appearances, it is still true that God 'created all things simultaneously' (creavit omnia simul).  This is the reason why seminal reasons, instead of leading to a transformist hypothesis, are constantly called upon by Augustine to account for the stability of species."

Gilson goes on: 

"The element from which the seminal reasons are made have their own nature and efficacy, and this is the reason why a grain of wheat produces wheat rather than beans, or a man begets a man and not an animal of another species.  The seminal reasons are principles of stability rather than of change." (Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Augustine 207).

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