Comment by knightoffaith

Central to Christian theology is the idea of the non-competitive transcendence of God. Augustine also says (along with basically every Christian) that all things are caused by God and exist/occur only through God's will. But in statements like this, he isn't ruling out or making these claims in opposition to natural explanations for phenomena in the world, because God's actions don't "compete" with physical phenomena at the same metaphysical level.