Texts in Conversation
Tobit describes God's power reaching into Hades. In the Confessions, Augustine interprets this as God present in hell, quoting a psalm as he asks how he can summon God when God is already there.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Tobit 13:2
Deuterocanon
1 And he said Blessed is God that lives for ever, and his kingdom, For he chastises, and shows mercy. 2 He leads down to Hades below the earth, And he brings up from the great destruction; And there is nothing that shall escape his hand. 3 Give thanks to him before the Gentiles, you children of Israel, For he has scattered you among them, 4 And there he has shown you his greatness; And extol him before all the living. Because he is our Lord, and he our God, and he our Father, Yes, he is God to all the ages:
Augustine, Confessions 1.2
Early Christian
And how shall I call upon my God—my God and my Lord? For when I call on him I ask him to come into me. And what place is there in me into which my God can come? How could God, the God who made both heaven and earth, come into me? Is there anything in me, Lord my God, that can contain you? Do even the heaven and the earth, which you have made, and in which you made me, contain you? Is it possible that, since without you nothing that exists would exist, you made it so that whatever exists has some capacity to receive you? Why, then, do I ask you to come into me, since I also exist and could not exist if you were not in me? For I am not, after all, in hell—and yet you are there too, for "if I go down into hell, you are there." Therefore I would not exist—I would simply not be at all—unless I exist in you, from whom and by whom and in whom all things are. Even so, Lord; even so. Where do I call you to, when I am already in you? Or from where would you come into me? Where, beyond heaven and earth, could I go so that my God might come to me there—he who has said, "I fill heaven and earth"?
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Notes and References
“... Conybeare (2016:59) notes: ‘The entire prayer of Tobit 13 is
in fact of immense importance for the themes of the
Confessions’. O’Donnell (1992b:6–7) demonstrates that
Tobit 13 was important for the Confessiones not only
because of allusions to its content, but even its structure,
which O’Donnell clearly sets out. Tobit 12:7, after all, has
Raphael say that it is important to reveal and confess the
works of God, which is the major impetus of the
Confessiones. O’Donnell (1992b:6–7) notes several allusions
to Tobit 13 in Confessiones 1.1.1, 1.2.2, 1.16.26, 2.2.4, 2.3.6,
2.6.14, 2.9.18, 3.3.5, 4.15.24, 7.21.27, 8.5.12, 8.6.14, 10.2.2,
10.6.8, 12.16.23, 13.38.53 and so on. ...”
de Wet, Chris L.
The Book of Tobit in Early Christianity: Greek and Latin Interpretations from the 2nd to the 5th Century CE
(p. 9) HTS Teologiese Studies Vol. 76, No. 4, 2020
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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