Augustine describes his attempts to think about the nature of God. He still conceives of God as a kind of matter, like air or water, filling the spaces of the universe. Nebridius has already proposed a convincing argument against the dualist mythology of the Manichees: If God can be harmed by evil, then God is not all-powerful, which is absurd; if God cannot be harmed by evil, why is there any need for God to fight evil? But Augustine is still troubled by the origin of evil, which he cannot comprehend because he still does not comprehend Christ. He begins to understand that sin results from the corruption of the human will. He is finally convinced that astrology is false, after he hears the story of a rich man and a beggar born at exactly the same moment, so that their horoscopes must be the same. Then he reads the works of the Platonists, and he sees Christ reflected in them. Using Platonic ideas, he is finally able to move upward through material things to the contemplation of the immaterial divine. Augustine comprehends that to God, there is no evil; seen as a totality, from the perspective of God's eternity, the entire creation is harmonious and good. Sin is a rejection of the higher good, God, for the lower goods of material things. Contemplation of these truths is too much for Augustine's strength, but by the mediation of Christ between the material and immaterial, understanding is possible. Having read the Platonists, Augustine is now able to study the Bible with a clearer understanding, because Platonism alone is not enough to save him.
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