 Although he appears to draw these results from tensions within Descartes’ theory of ideas, Malebranche finds additional support and inspiration for the doctrine of Vision in God in Augustine’s theory of divine illumination. Indeed, it is often said that Vision in God combines Descartes’ representationalism with an Augustinian or Neoplatonic ontology of ideas. The exact degree to which Augustine directly influenced Malebranche here, however, is difficult to gauge and one commentator has argued that the influence was minimal at most (See Connell 1967). That having been said, Malebranche often writes as if the lineage was direct and tends to minimize his philosophical differences with Augustine over the nature of cognition: