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"Augustine says, desire for objects that are cut free from their source and their end in God is ultimately the desire for nothing. Because choice itself is the only good, because desire is the only thing objectively desirable, desire becomes a desire for nothing. In Augustine’s vision of the great chain of being, all things that exist are good, but only insofar as they participate in God, the source of their being and the source of all good. To pursue the lower things on the chain of being for their own sake, to forget their source and their final end, is to sever the link that holds them in being, at which point they begin to slide back into the nothingness from which the creatio ex nihilo summoned them. For Augustine, sin is committed when 'in consequence of an immoderate urge towards those things at the bottom end of the scale of good, we abandon the higher and supreme goods, that is you, Lord God, and your truth and your law.' This is not just a matter of wanting too much; it is a matter of wanting without any idea why we want what we want. To desire with no good other than desire itself is to desire arbitrarily. To desire with no telos, no connection to the objective end of desire, is to desire nothing and to become nothing. 'I abandoned you to pursue the lowest things of your creation. I was dust going to dust.'"

William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed, 13-14.