other features of Greek thought which militate against a theological realisation of the full reality of the material world. For Augustine, the world is sometimes affirmed as good—because it is the product of the will of God—sometimes denigrated as ‘next to nothing’9 because he still thinks in terms of a Neoplatonist hierarchy of being. The result is that sometimes he affirms that the world is created with time and space, but at others appears to take away with the left hand what is given with the