Augustine on The Trinity
The most widespread and longest-lasting theological controversies of the 4th century focused on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity—that is, the threeness of God represented in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Augustine's Africa had been left out of much of the fray, and most of what was written on the subject was in Greek, a language Augustine barely knew and had little access to. But he was keenly aware of the prestige and importance of the topic, and so in 15 books he wrote his own exposition of it, De trinitate (399/400–416/421; The Trinity). Augustine is carefully orthodox, after the spirit of his and succeeding times, but adds his own emphasis in the way he teaches the resemblance between God and man: the threeness of God he finds reflected in a galaxy of similar triples in the human soul, and he sees there both food for meditation and deep reason for optimism about the ultimate human condition. He argues against skepticism by saying that if he is deceived, he is at least certain that he is alive.
The portion of the Nicean Creed (325) relevant to these reflections.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten (γεννηθέντα) of the Father the only-begotten (μονογενῆ); that is, of the essence (οὐσίας) of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father;
And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life (ζῳοποιόν), who proceedeth (ἐκπορευόμενον)from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.
[But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance (ὑποστάσεως or hypostasis)' or 'essence (οὐσίας),' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'— they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.]
In what follows, I include in my reflections on The Trinity, works from Karl Barth (Church Dogmtics), Peter Hodgson Winds of the Spirit, Robert Jensen, Systematic Theology, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology and Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology.
In Book I.1.1, he refers to the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith and are deceived by a crude and perverse love reason. He begins with a difficult pill to swallow. He is asking the reader to accept by faith the orthodox teaching of the church regarding the nature of God as trinitarian doctrine understands it. In I.1.2, he notes that scripture, as primary witness to this teaching, uses words draw from any class of existing things to nourish our understanding in such a way that we may gradually rise to divine and transcendent things. 1.1.3 he admits that it is hard to see how God creates temporal things and events without temporal movement within divine being. He believes a story of temporal events while not acknowledging any temporal contamination of God (Jenson Volume I, 112). It may well be that he needed to figure out a way in which eternity embraces time, thereby making it not as difficult as he imagines it to be here. 1.2.4 Augustine provides the theological rule of the Trinity. The Trinity is the one and true God, in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one and the same substance or essence. In I.3.5, he offers the caution that those who inquire into the unity of the Trinity error is dangerous, the inquiry is true intellectual work, and yet, the discovery of the truth contained it is so profitable. He suggests that many persons should author many books on this topic, differing in style but not in faith, dealing with the same questions, so that its truth may reach the greatest number. In I.4.7, affirming a basic rule of trinitarian reflections, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are an intimate divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality, and therefore they are not three gods, but one God. The Father has begotten the Son, and so, the Father is not the Son and the Son is the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father of the Father and the Son in a way that testifies to the unity of the Trinity. The question Augustine raises here is whether we can infer trinity from the unity.[1] If so, putting the doctrine of the unity first has justification. Trinitarian statements would then supplement what one says about the one God. This approach is possible only if we suppose that what we say about the unity of God is an insufficient account of who God is. If we do not suppose this, then trinitarian statements become superfluous and external additions to the doctrine of the one God. One can resolve the situation by insisting on the unity of the divine substance prior to all trinitarian differentiation and by defining this unity in such a way as to rule out any idea of substantial distinction even at the cost of making the differentiation of the three persons in God an impenetrable secret. He tried to interpret the statements of trinitarian dogma based on the simple unity of the divine substance. His first point was there can be no substantial distinction even though there are three persons. In I.5.8, he admits that some persons find a difficulty in this faith that the Father, Son, and Spirit are God individually and in unity. It seems like the faith is in three gods. in such difficult matters, we can appreciate that he acknowledges that he can disclose only so much of the road as he has already passed, and the point to which he has reached, while the course yet remains to bring him to the end. Beginning in I.6.9 he offers scripture that require the doctrine of the Trinity. He will discuss both those that affirm it, focusing on John 1:1-18, while also dealing with scriptures that imply an inferiority of the Son.
Book II focuses the way in which the sending of the Son and of the Spirit does not mean they are less than the one who sends. He can say that actions of the Son in the Old Testament could just easily be said of Father and Spirit. One can easily dispute exegesis of the passages to which Augustine refers. However, the Old Testament itself hints at something like the Trinity when it easily refers to appearances of the Lord to Abraham, Moses, and Daniel. Such appearances made it easier for the New Testament to see in Jesus and in the coming of the Spirit the presence of God in their historical moment.
Book III pursues the question of the appearances to which he referred in the previous book. In III.3, he can say that actions of the Son in the Old Testament could just easily be said of Father and Spirit. In III.11.22, he will say that the substance (a passive term) or better the essence (esse, an active term denoting energetic being) of God in the appearances did not make itself visible. The tradition preferred the second term.
Book IV takes a turn toward considering the purpose of the sending of the Son. In IV.1, Augustine begins by placing knowledge of self, knowledge of the weakness of the self, which leads to proper health and strength, is preferrable to knowledge of the external world. He grants that even this preferred knowledge is tainted by the limited and fragmentary nature of our self-knowledge. Yet, he strives to return to the solid truths by the path of the divinity of the only-begotten Son. He is the essence of God, thereby having nothing changeable since truth and love are eternal. In IV.1.2, we are in exile from the joy of living in divine truth and love, but we are not so exiled that we do not naturally seek eternity, truth, and blessedness, even if we seek them in temporal things. Our search continues because finite and temporal things cannot satisfy our longing, so our pilgrimage continues. The message of the church seeks to persuade people of how much God loved us, lest we despair. The message of the church also seeks to show us who we are, lest we become proud as if our merits earn the love of God. In IV.3.5, he starts a discussion of how the single life, death, and resurrection of Jesus answers in harmony with our need for salvation. In IV.4.7, he takes an unfortunate turn toward numerology of the number 3. In IV.10.13, our true peace and firm bond of union with the creator is that we should be purified and reconciled through the Mediator of life, since we have been polluted and alienated through the mediator of death. The devil led humanity through pride to death, while Christ through lowliness led humanity back to the creator through obedience to life. IV.17.23, he says we ought not to go philosophers to understand the successions of ages or the resurrection of the dead, by which I assume he refers to something like what we find in the Book of Revelation. In IV.20.29, he refers to the Holy Spirit as the gift of God who proceeds from Father.
Book V deals with rational arguments against the orthodox notion of the Trinity. In V.2.3, God is essence (substance, ousia). Yet, as an essence, God is unlike the essence of any finite, temporal thing. We can refer to the essence of a finite thing in a way that allows its description to include accidents, that is, that which may change from one thing to another, or that which may change over time. that which changes does not retain its own being. In V.4.5, therefore, there is nothing accidental in God, because nothing is changeable or lost in God, which we can say by definition. Yet, in V.5.6, we can say things regarding God that are not according the divine essence. He refers to the relation generated eternally in the Father, Son, and Spirit relation. Father and Son have a reciprocal relation that is eternal and unchangeable. Relations in the divine substance are not accidents. Yet,[2] the question remains that if we exclude accidents from the simple essence of God, and we speak of relational distinctions in God, we must acknowledge that he made no attempt to derive trinitarian distinctions from the divine unity. In V.8.9, he wants to distinguish between that which applies to divine essence and that which applies to divine relation. What is said of Father, Son, and Spirit applies to the divine essence. He can say that whatever is said of God as Father, Son, and Spirit is said in triple and equivalently of the Trinity in the singular. The Spirit is common to both Father and Son. He is the fellowship between them. He is their common gift. He concludes by saying he uses the term “essence” while Greeks prefer “ousia.” In V.8.10, he makes the unexpected admission. Her refers to the Greeks, who use hypostasis, making it different in a way he does not understand with ousia. Greeks will refer to one ousian and three hypostaseis, which he reads in Latin as one essence and three substances. Given that he has already identified substance and essence, this is a strange misunderstanding. The basic rule, according to Jenson, Volume I, 110-4, was that all action that impacts the creature begins with the Father becomes actual in the Son and is perfected through the Spirit. The action of God is not divided among the three agents of divine action. The undividedness of divine action requires perfect mutuality of the three agents. Such a notion can make sense only if temporal events bring differentiation in God. God must incorporate temporality into the divine being for the doctrine of the Trinity to make sense. Augustine did not seem to notice that Nicea asserts eventful differentiation in God. He seems blinded by his Platonic notion that God must be metaphysically simple and that no self-differentiation can be true of God. He assumed that temporal distinctions do not exist in God. The idea of mutuality in divine action did not occur to him. The problem here is that the Augustinian supposition that there is no necessary connection between what differentiates the triune identities in God and the structure of the work of God in time bankrupts the doctrine of Trinity cognitively, for it detaches language about the triune identities from the only that made such language meaningful in the first place, which was the biblical narrative. He resolves the dissonance between Greek metaphysical principles and the gospel story by preferring the metaphysical principles at this point. The larger point is that Augustine commits a misstep in his exposition of the Trinity that has affected western theology. Western theology needs correction at this point. In V.9, he acknowledges that when we ask the question What three, human language labors under poverty of speech. The orthodox answer is “three persons,” not speak completely, but that we must not leave it completely unspoken. Augustine admits that “person” is a necessity due to our language, for a suitable term for the distinctions within the Trinitarian God does not exist. Our notion of person denotes separateness in a way that the Trinity would not suggest. In V.10.12, he says that while we cannot refer to the Trinity as Father or Son, we can do so with the Spirit, since “God is Spirit.” He goes further to say that the Holy Spirit is not the Trinity, but is in the Trinity, he is the Holy Spirit relationally to Father and Son. The relation is apparent when we understand him as the gift of God, for he is the gift of the father and of the Son, since he proceeds from the Father. I think he prefers this term because the Creed refers to the Spirit as the Giver of life. The Spirit is gift. The Holy Spirit is a certain unutterable communion of the Father and the Son and on that account, he is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. His point is that spirituality is the essence of Father and Son. Augustine was right to describe the Spirit as the bond of union between the Father and the Son. This notion leads Peter Hodgson to discuss Hegel.[3] The “Absolute Spirit” in Hegel is the Spirit that absolves, lets the world go forth from itself freely and sets it free from every constraining factor. Father, Son and Spirit are distinct moments or patterns in an indivisible divine process. Each includes all. The love of the divine One is a liberating love, oriented to redemption; the freedom of the divine One is a compassionate freedom, riveted to the world; the divine One is the One who loves us in freedom. In V.12.13, the gift of the Father and of the Son is the Spirit in a way that correspond mutually to each other: the gift of the giver and the giver of the gift. He states that the Spirit as gift brings him into relation to Father and Son. The Spirit is the gift of God, and the Spirit gives himself. He is this gift because of the existence of creatures. In V.13.14, he says the Father is relationally the Beginning and the Father in relation to the Son, and the Beginning in relation to all things. Yet, Father, Son, and Spirit are each Beginning in the sense of their involvement in creation. Augustine focuses upon the relation of origin in a way that for many is problematic. In V.14.15, the Spirit is both Spirit of God who gave him and ours who have received him. The Father and the Son are a Beginning of the Holy Spirit in a way that is one Beginning. In an analogous way, Father, Son, and Spirit are one Beginning with respect to every finite thing. V.16.17, the Spirit is a gift eternally, but also a gift given in time.
Book VI explores how Paul can say Christ is the power and wisdom of God. In VI.1.2-2.3, Augustine deals with the weakness of the notion of some that the persons of the Trinity having their unity in the one Godhead would mean that the attributes of the Father would exist only in the Son. It violates the notion of the equal nature of the persons of the Trinity. As he puts it, the Father is not God without the Son, nor the Son God without the Father, but both together are God. In VI.5.7, Augustine describes the Spirit as the eternal communion of the Father and the Son, as the love that unites them. The Holy Spirit is the unity of the Father and Son in holiness and love. The Holy Spirit is “something” common both to the Father and Son, the communion being consubstantial and co-eternal, a friendship and love, that binds Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is Lord in inseparable unity with Father and Son. Barth[4] will say that this communion of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. He is the common factor in the mode of being of God as Father and Son. He is what is common to them as far as they are the Father and the Son. The potential problem here is that the Spirit adds nothing to the Trinity, but rather is the duplication of the love the Father has for the Son. However, the way Augustine formulates it, the Spirit is that part of the Trinity who differentiates and unites the relation of Father and Son. This may well be a wonderful role, but does this role add anything to the Trinity?[5] In VI.6.8, he begins a consideration of how divine essence can be both simple and manifold. He notes that finite creatures are manifold, but in no way simple. In VI.10.12, he points that creation is the result of divine skill, showing a certain form and order. It is fitting that we find traces of the Trinity in the finite things God has made.
Book VII continues with the question that began the previous book. He wants to enquire whether each person of the Trinity is God, or only with the other two. In VII.1.1, he understands something we say something by Son that Word does not say, so we need both. In VII.1.2 he puts special emphasis upon the Word. However[6], Augustine rejects the central position of Athanasius and the Cappadocian insights that the three are God precisely by the relations between them, which he here describes as absurd. Pannenberg will say that there can be no consubstantiality of the persons if they have their substantiality only in mutual relation. The relation between the persons is constitutive for both their distinctions and for their deity. The unity of Father, Son, and Spirit finds expression in the relations of salvation history which are determined by their mutual self-distinction. Such joint working of the persons and their mutual perichoresis is an expression of the unity of the divine essence. The one God is so transcendent and yet also present in the process of salvation history that the events of history bear on the identity of the divine essence. Augustine thought he could self-evidently presuppose the ontological concept of essence, but theology must show that we can think of the divine essence as the epitome of the personal relations among Father, Son, and Spirit. In VII.3.6, he says the Holy Spirit is the love that joins Father and Son together, as well as joins us to the Father and Son, in such a way that “God is love.” In VII.4.7, Augustine notes that the Greek part of the church speaks of one essence and three substances, but the Latins of one essence or substance and three persons. God is more truly thought than altered and exists more truly than thought. He asks what three they are and what they have in common. The being of the Father is not common to them. the image of three friends does not work either. What three do we speak when we speak Trinity? If three persons, then they share personhood in common. Yet, there is no difference of essence. Person is a generic name, for a human being is a person, but there is a great gulf between a human being and God. Thus, Augustine admits that “person” is a necessity due to our language, for a suitable term for the distinctions within the Trinitarian God does not exist. Our notion of person denotes separateness in a way that the Trinity would not suggest. In VII.5.10, we improperly call God substance and properly refer to the essence of God. He prefers referring to three persons rather than three substances. He rejects calling the persons hypostases, since the Latin equivalent was substantia. In VII.6.11, he wonders why one essence subdivides into three persons. Augustine is saying that God is one substance or essence, which means that God remains essentially one while becoming known in three persons. In all of this, the notion of person is primarily relational, identifying the constitution of the Trinity and the inner life of the Trinity. Moltmann would prefer to distinguish between them.[7]
Book VIII shows no person of the Trinity is greater than the other. In VIII.1, Augustine deals with making distinctions within the Trinity as grounded in the relations within the Trinity. He rejects calling the persons hypostases, since the Latin equivalent was substantia. The mutual relations of the of the persons condition the distinctions within the one God. These relations are eternal. In VIII.1.2, no person of the Trinity is greater or lesser than the other. In VIII.4.6, one who is not known, but is believed, can be loved. In VIII.5.8, he applies this to our desire to understand the eternity, equality, and unity of the Trinity. We ought to believe before we understand. He ponders how we can love, by believing, that Trinity which we do not know. In VIII.6.9, righteousness is beauty of the mind which makes people beautiful. In VIII.7.10, he is writing of true or genuine love, so that by adhering to the truth we may live righteously. In VIII.8.12, we are to embrace the love of God and by love embrace God. We love love. We love one who loves something, for it is the nature of love to love something. Love is what it is in relationship to something else. It is analogous to our use of words, which also indicate themselves but also something else. Love refers to itself but also to that which it loves. In VIII.9.13, faith will lead to the knowledge and love of God, so that we may know God more clearly and love God more steadfastly. In VIII.10.14, his psychological analogies were simply meant to offer a very general way of linking the unity and trinity and thus creating some plausibility for trinitarian statements. Thus, love is of some one that loves, and with love something is loved. Thus, there are three things, one who loves, that which one loves, and love itself. Love is a certain form of life that couples together two things, the one who loves that which one loves. He concludes by saying he will rest, but not because we have found what we seek, for we have only found where to look. Thus, love requires a lover, a beloved, and a love that unites them, in a kind of three-in-oneness, for in speaking of these three, we are speaking only of a single reality, that of love. To say that God is love is to say that God eternally is in the process of self-differentiation and self-identification, for love cannot fulfill itself in a solitary object, a process that will carry within itself the pain of negation.[8] Barth[9] will say that the ground out of which Father, Son, and Spirit arise is in their relation to each other. The threeness consists in the fact that in the essence or act in which God is God there is first a pure origin and then two different issues. God manifests as God in these relations. God brings forth the divine self in two distinctive ways. God possesses the divine self as Father, that is, as pure Giver, as Son, that is, as Receiver and Giver, and as Spirit, that is, as pure Receiver. The One and the Same can be this and that in the truly opposing determinations of these original relations without ceasing to be the One and the same. Each of these relations as such can also be the One in whom these relations occur.
In Books 9-11, Augustine deals with the vestiges of the Trinity. He considers the mystery and unity of the Trinity. He will discuss reasons and analogies for the trinitarian belief of scripture with a treatment of the natural knowledge of God. We attain to this natural knowledge by means of vestiges of the Trinity in the works of creation and we then find them more clearly in the human soul. In some way, we need to rescue this achievement of Augustine. Jensen lists his analysis: the Father is being, the Son is knowledge, and the Spirit will; the Father is mind, the Son is knowledge, and the Spirit is love; the Father is memory, the Son knowledge, the Spirit will. The Trinity is person, and the Father, Son, and Spirit are the inner life of that personal God. Such a notion could undo trinitarianism. It refers to an analogue of the Trinity. It suggests that in some creaturely reality distinct from revelation that manifests itself in its own structure by creation a certain similarity to the structure of the Trinitarian God of Christian revelation, doing so in such a way as to be an image of the trinitarian God. Augustine separates himself from the Cappadocian tradition, which is the Eastern church followed, as they preferred to think in a communal way about family when looking for such traces of the Trinity.[10]
In Book IX, he suggests that our experience of mind, and the knowledge by which the mind knows itself, and the love by which it loves itself and the knowledge it gains have a mutuality in their wholeness that reveals their oneness of essence. Thus, our experience of the world becomes a trace of the triune life of God. In IX.1.1, he invites us to have the disposition to seek the truth, which is a safer position than a disposition that presumes to know unknown things. Further, he invites us to doubt without unbelief and affirm without rashness. He wants us to believe that the differentiated life of God as Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one God, a trinity of persons mutually interrelated, and a unity of an equal essence. In IX.2.2, he admits that he is not ready to ponder such heavenly matters, but rather of their image in human experience. He refers to his previous discussion of the lover, the beloved, and the love that binds them in relationship. In IX.3.3, he notes that a mind cannot know other minds if it does not know itself. As the mind gathers the knowledge of its world through the senses, but if matters intellectual and spiritual it gains knowledge through itself. Mind, distinguished from the physical brain, has a at least a non-physical aspect in which if it does not know itself, it does not love itself. In IX.4.4, he has pointed to three things, the mind and the love of it when it loves itself as well as the mind and the knowledge of it, and the three are equal. In IX.5.8, we can distinguish the trinity of mind, love, and knowledge while also recognize their mutuality as all in all. the mind loves itself as a whole and knows itself as a whole. They are marvelously inseparable while also distinguishable and while sharing one essence in the mutuality of their relation. In IX.8, distinguishes between desire (cupiditas), which directs love toward a finite thing in itself, and love (charitas), which enjoys the finite thing in reference to the Creator. We ought to love ourselves and others in the Lord, directing ourselves upward rather than downward. In IX.12.18, will (voluntas), since everyone who seeks wills (vult) to find, and if one seeks knowledge, one wills to know. If one wills ardently, one studies (studere) to learn. Therefore, desire precedes the mind stretching beyond itself as it seeks and finds, giving birth to knowledge. The desire is not the stretching out of the mind nor is it the knowledge one gains. The desire is the love of the thing when known, while it holds and embraces its knowledge, uniting it to the mind. The mind possesses an image of the Trinity as the mind gains knowledge of itself, which is the knowledge to which it gives birth and its word concerning itself, and love as a third, yet the three are one essence. Jensen suggests that in the view of Augustine, God has left soul-prints of triunity everywhere in the created order. They are in perception, as external objects encountering the mind that can perceive external objects. Thus, in a common human function, there is a threefold unity as an act of perception that requires the mind, objects, and the act of perceiving.
Book X discusses another trinity human experience, that of memory, understanding, and will. According to Pannenberg, he does this in the context of his search for self-knowledge, which continues in many of his writings, as in Trinity book 10. He mentions the question of what could motivate an enquiry into something unknown. He supposes that love would have to motivate an enquiry of the thing into which one enquires. However, how can one love something, and so have motivation to enquire into it, when it remains unknown? The enquirer already knows what he is enquiring into according to its genus. He refers to the exhortation: “Know thyself.” He asks how the mind could fail to know itself. He decides that, in an important way, the mind cannot fail to know itself. Nothing is so present to the mind as itself. Why was the mind commanded to know itself? The admonition to “know thyself” is to be understood as an admonition not to turn away from oneself but to live according to one’s nature under God. The mind is something that lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges. These essential activities of the mind are self-certifying in an interlocking way.
In Book X.1.1, he wants to explain the same point as in the previous book with greater thoroughness. One cannot love that about which one is entirely ignorant, so we must carefully consider of what sort is the love of those who are studious, for they do not already know and still desire some branch of learning. In X.1.2, one must already know that a word is a sign, such as the word “temetum” (protection, refuge). A word is not an empty sound. The word signifies something. One does not love the three syllables of the word, but rather, gaining knowledge of what it signifies. In X.3.5, he wonders what mind loves when it seeks as ardently to know itself. The mind seeks to know itself with studious zeal. What does it love in doing so? Does it love itself? However, we have already said that you cannot love what you do not know. The mind may love what it imagines itself to be, which may be widely different from what it is. It may love a fanciful image of itself. If so, the mind loves itself before it knew itself, because it gazes upon that which is like itself. It knows other minds from which to picture itself, so why does it not know itself, since nothing can be more present to it that itself. Then again, the mind may be close to itself, as our eyes cannot look directly at themselves, but only through a reflection in a mirror. Since the mind contemplates non-physical matters, it has no mirror to see itself. The mind knows what it is to know and it loves to know, and so it desires to know itself. In what way can the mind know its own knowing? The mind knows it knows other things but that it does not know itself. How can that which does not know itself know itself as knowing other things? When it seeks to know itself, it knows itself as seeking, and thus knows itself. It cannot have complete ignorance of itself, for it at least knows that it is in the process of knowing. In X.5.7, why is it so commonly said: Know yourself? It is an invitation to consider itself and live according to one’s own nature. We do many things through desire, but in such a way that it seems as if we forget ourselves. We may see excellence and recognize we ought to remain focused upon and enjoy that, but we turn away from it so easily by our desire, slipping gradually down into that which less and less even while thinking it on a path of more and more. In X.6.8, the mind lovingly and intimately connects itself with such false images of itself and in doing so errs greatly. In X.8.11, he considers it a wonderful question when we consider in what manner the soul seeks and finds itself, at what does it aim in order to seek. After all, what is in the mind more than the mind itself? However, the mind is in the finite and temporal things about which it thinks of with love, and thus, is unable to be itself without the images it has gained from the world. shameful error arises as the mind seeks to know itself, for it cannot separate itself from the images it has learned from the world. The mind is within, it goes forth from itself in the act of perception, it exerts affection of love toward that which it perceives, leaving footprint of many acts of attention. Such footprints are imprinted on the memory through perception, so that the mind holds images of what has perceived. In X.9.12, the mind seeks discern itself precisely because it is already present and seeks self-knowledge because it distinguishes itself from others. In X.10.13, the mind bidden to know itself knows the saying bids the self that is, lives, and understands, to do so know itself. The mind knows it is, lives, and understands. In fact, everyone already understands, are, and live. They know that they will, and equally know that one who wills is and lives. They also know that they remember. To study ardently is to have memory, understanding, and the will to enjoy them and use them. In X.10.14, we do not reasonably doubt that we live, remember, understand, think, know, and judge. In our doubts we live, we remember why we doubt, we understand that we doubt, we wish to be certain, we are thinking that we are doubting, we know we do not know, and that we ought not to make decisions rashly. In X.11.17, he wants to focus upon memory, understanding, and will. In X.11.18, each of the three, even if we distinguish them, abide in one essence.
The unity of selfhood is made up of memory, understanding, and willing, showing how a personal subject or self may remain one while being threefold. We can describe each aspect of the self, but together, they refer to a single person. Love requires a lover, a beloved, and a love that unites them, in a kind of three-in-oneness, for in speaking of these three, we are speaking only of a single reality, that of love. According to Hegel, the truth of the Trinity is most adequately grasped in logical categories and the dialectic of identity, difference, and mediation, or of unity, separation, and reunification. Such categories reflect the movement of consciousness and of life.[11] Barth (II.1, 263) expresses this in terms of the dialectic of subject, object, and predicate, or of revealer, revealed, and the act of revelation. Augustine draws his analogies from sense experience. The misleading aspect of this is that each moment is what it is in relation to the other moments. God is God through the relation of aseity or self-generation, the inner divine play of self and other. In the moment of difference, God constitutes the world as object through the relation of creative and redemptive love. In the moment of mediation God and world are co-constituted and consummated as Spirit through the relation of freedom.
Book XI deals with a kind of image of the Trinity in the outer or physical person. In XI.1., he wants to find a trace of the Trinity in bodily sense so that even here we will find some reflection of the image of God. In XI.2.2, he says that in our perception of finite things in our world, we distinguish three acts, the object itself that we see, the vision or act of seeing, and the attention of the mind that keeps the sense of the eye in the object seen. In XI.2.3, the objects in the world do not produce our sense of sight, yet they produce the form in its own likeness in our sense of sight when we perceive anything by seeing. We do not distinguish the form of the body which we see from the form that is produced by it in the sense of one who sees, since the union of the two is so close that there is no room for distinguishing them. we rationally infer that we could not have sensation at all unless some similitude of the object we see worked into our sense of sight. He uses the analogy of imprinting a ring on wax. We do not see the imprint until we separate the ring from the wax. If we do not see the ring, the imprint left will easily persuade us of the prior existence of the ring. The physical act of perception is a more difficult case because we will find a physical image in our sense. In XI.2.5, the objects of the world are separate from us, unless we are perceiving our bodies. However, our act of perception has the imprint of the objects perceived through the body in the soul. The imprint upon the soul involves the will that brings the first two acts together. Thus, the form of the object we see and the image of it in the sense of seeing combine through the act of will as it retains it in the mind. If the will does so with love, desire, or lust, it affects the rest of the body. XI.5.8, the mind has great power to imagine not only things forgotten but things that it never saw or experienced by increasing, diminishing, or changing after its pleasure. It imagines things to be such as either it knows they are not, or does not know that they are. We must take care that the mind does not speak falsely in deception or hold an opinion to deceive.
The theologians I consulted did not refer to the next three books. I can see why. Throughout these books he distinguishes between knowledge and wisdom. I am glad that in XII.7.10 that Genesis makes it clear that male and female alike bear the image of God, rather than the idea that only in the oneness of marriage do they bear the image of God. In XIIi.6, he refers to a poet, Ennius, who said that all mortals wish to have others praise them. it led me to reflect upon how easy it can be to conform what we say and do to receive such praise. We often need to have the courage to what we believe to be right. It reminded me of the fickleness of people as well, who may well praise you one moment, but pursue another course in another moment. Any leadership position carries with it the burden of doing things that will not receive praise. In XIII.13.17, he says that God needed to overcome the power of the devil not with power but with righteousness. In the same, in imitation of Christ, we are to overcome the devil with righteousness rather than use of power. XIII.15.19, he accepts the notion that the blood of Christ was payment of ransoms and redeems human beings from the power of the devil. In XIV.4.6, he wants to find the image of the Creator, the Triune God, in the rational or intellectual soul of humanity. In XIV.8.11, he says the image of God implanted on human nature is the best possibility for finding the trace of the Trinity in created things. He will want to find the image of in the mind as it in itself. The image of God remains, regardless of how defaced it may be due to human sin. When we see here the mind remembering, understanding, and loving itself, we discern a trinity that is an image of the Triune God.
Book XV suggests that path taken thus far allows Augustine to inquire concerning the Trinity. In XV.1.1, human beings, being in the image of God in a way no other living thing can be in reason or intelligence of mind. In XV.2.2, we receive encouragement to seek God that we may find and found in order that one may seek more eagerly. Faith seeks while understanding finds. In XV.2.3, he thinks we have tarried long enough among created things in order that we may know God in them (Romans 1:20). In XV.3.5, he offers a summary of the first fourteen books. In XV.4.6, he wants to seek the Trinity in the things that are eternal, incorporeal, and unchangeable. The creator is above created things, so the creator lives, perceives, and understands in the highest sense, and thus cannot die, suffer decay, or change, and thus, be most beautiful, good, and blessed. In XV.5.8, if God is eternal, living, wise, powerful, beautiful, good, and blessed spirit, only the last term describes the essence of God, for “God is Spirit.” Yet, each term applies to the essence of God. He reaffirms in XV.6.10, that the trinities his book as pointed toward in human life are not ways of beholding the Trinity, for as he has said often, they are only traces of the Trinity found in that being who is the image of God. In XV.7.11, he says that the trinities he has discovered in humanity are not themselves a human being. Augustine seems to understand the problem he has presented for himself when he asks: If, then, the Trinity itself and the persons of Trinity singly can all be said to be whatever God is, where or how will triunity be manifest? He never answers the question.[12] He does say that he understands how wonderful and incomprehensible is knowledge of God when he cannot even comprehend himself. In XV.12., he deals with a form of philosophy that doubts everything. Yet, even the one deceived cannot doubt that he or she is living. In XV.14.23, he affirms the Word is the only begotten Son of the Father, in all things like and equal to the Father, God of God, Light of Light, Wisdom of Wisdom, Essence of Essence, is that which the Father ism, yet is not the Father, for one is Son and the other is Father. The Father uttered Himself, begetting the Word equal to Himself in all things. Thus, when God speaks, then Mind and Logos share equal truth and dignity. Barth[13] will say that we are saying the same thing when we refer to Jesus as the Word of God or the Son of God. The Word of God that is spoken to us is no other and no less than God. Further,[14] as the Word that God thinks or speaks eternally, the content of which can be no other than God, Jesus Christ is God. Yet, our experience has no analogy to this, since for us, we know no word that is the essence of the speaker. Only revelation and faith can lift us to the truth found in this Word. In XV.17.27, he now wants to treat of the Holy Spirit as the gift of God, consistent with the Creed that the Spirit is the giver of life. The Spirit is unites Father and Son and intimates to us a mutual love in which Father and Son reciprocally love each other. In XV.17.29, he affirms the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son. In XV.18.32, the most excellent gift given by the Spirit is love. His biblical basis for these reflections is Romans 5:5 and I John 4:13. In XV.19.36, the gift of the Holy Spirit is nothing other than the Spirit. The Spirit is the mutual love that binds Father and Son and fills us with this love as well. If the Spirit is personal being, he finally has only himself to give.[15] In 15.20ff he stresses the difference between the image of the Trinity in the soul and the threeness of their persons in God. In XV.23.43, Augustine pointed out that the image of the Trinity in human psychology is so full of infirmity that only God can heal. The copy falls far short of the original and are inadequate in helping us understand the inner life of God. In XV.26.47, he points out that nothing said of intra-Trinitarian life occurs in time. To speak of the generation of the Son from the Father and to speak of the procession of the Spirit from Father and Son is to speak of an eternal movement within the life of God and apart from the act of creating that which is different from God. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest change within God. Augustine thinks he has resolved the matter of the procession of the Spirit that distinguishes the generation of the Son from the beathing of the Spirit. The Spirit is common to both Father and Son. He is the fellowship between them. He is their common gift. The common procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son means both Father and Son are givers of the gift of the Spirit. He will refer to the image of the Trinity in human psychology. The genesis of the Spirit might be related to that of the Son in the same way as will or love is to knowledge in the soul. The will proceeds from knowledge without being an image of knowledge. Similarly, the Spirit from the Son. His psychological analogies were simply meant to offer a very general way of linking the unity and trinity and thus creating some plausibility for trinitarian statements. The picture of God in the human soul reflects the three persons in concert. Much later, such psychological reflections would influence Hegel to develop the notion of the self-consciousness of the absolute Spirit as its being revealed to itself, making possible its revelation to others. The irony of Barth basing his reflections on the Trinity on a portion of Augustine that is explicitly developing a notion of the vestiges of the Trinity is not one the student of theology should miss. He ends up basing his doctrine on the supreme vestige of, the image of the Trinity in the human soul, rather than on the content of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
What is the place of Trinity in the structure of Christian dogmatics?[16] It simply will not do to deduce it from the essence of the one God, where one views that essence as love or spirit. In either case, one will tend toward modalism or subordinationism, neither of which are faithful to the trinitarian dogma. Nor can it derive from divine self-consciousness, as if the subjectivity of the one God generates the other persons. The relation between the persons are constitutive for both their distinctions and for their deity. The unity of Father, Son, and Spirit finds expression in the relations of salvation history which are determined by their mutual self-distinction. Such joint working of the persons and their mutual perichoresis is an expression of the unity of the divine essence. The one God is so transcendent and yet also present in the process of salvation history that the events of history bear on the identity of the divine essence. Augustine thought he could self-evidently presuppose the ontological concept of essence (7.1.2), but in reality, theology must show that we can think of the divine essence as the epitome of the personal relations among Father, Son, and Spirit. Therefore, the only basis for the doctrine of the Trinity is the way in which Father, Son, and Spirit come on the scene and relate to each other in the event of revelation. It has its basis in the biblical witness to the event of revelation and thus to the economy of salvation. Christian reflection on the essence and attributes of God relate to the Triune God. This was the procedure of Barth as well. The grounding and development of the doctrine of the Trinity begins with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Barth treated the doctrine in relation to his discussion of revelation and prior to the doctrine of the essence and attributes of God places the question of who the God is who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
Among my disappointments is that Augustine promises to look directly at the Triune life of God, but I do not think he does. He has sought to describe traces of the Trinity in human life. He does this only to show areas of our lives that we can think in terms of threeness, but are yet elements of one person. It would be worth exploring the numerous ways in which we commonly recognize one thing as having multiple dimensions. Unicity and multiplicity are simply part of our world. It makes sense, then, if we properly know God, we will see unicity and multiplicity. However, we also need to avoid fascination with the number 3.
In the following two paragraphs, based upon the study of Augustine in The Trinity, I offer a brief reflection. Hegel was insightful in showing God as self-moving Spirit. God is self-Moving Thought in the sense of Triune Subject. Here is the transcendental mode of the one God as living Triunity. God is not lifeless identity. Rather, God is eternally moving toward and embracing the world of change and suffering. However, I think Sonderegger[17] was wrong in saying God is not self-moving Spirit in moving through the struggle and suffering of time that would come out on the other side of crucifixion. I hope I can show why.
I can write that as God is by definition eternal, and thus, that the life of God was always that of begetting the Son. The essence of God always involved this begetting of the Son, and therefore always included the union of the divine and human in one man, Jesus of Nazareth, and thus, the movement of God eternally included that which was different from God. The divine energy eternally embraced the finite and temporal. As such, eternal divine life included the tension of the opposite of God, that which is finite, temporal, subject to suffering and death and abandonment by God. Such divine movement and energy eternally included the procession of the Spirit in a way that bound Father and Son in mutual and reciprocal love. As such, the role of the Spirit is that of bringing the always anticipated created things into loving relation with the Father and Son. We might be able to imagine this movement and energy within the life of God as always describing the intra-Trinitarian life of God.
If the above paragraph is something like the eternal and spiritual inner life of God, then God actualizes that inner divine energy and life in the act of creating all things, but especially in beings who bear the image of God. God embraces these beings, you and I, by the fact of our existence, but further, in disclosing the identity of God in revelation. The event of revelation discloses a mystery, doing so through Jesus of Nazareth, which in itself verifies the activity of God in Abraham and his clan, among the Hebrew tribes and their liberation from Egypt and establishment of life in Canaan, the emergence of Israel and its kings, its judgment and renewal in exile, and finally in the Word made flesh, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus himself led a Spirit-endowed ministry of teaching and gathering disciples that would lead to his suffering and death by crucifixion. He would experience abandonment from the Father, even as he had committed his life to the Father. In doing so, he identified himself with the extreme abandonment and loneliness many human beings experience. The Spirit who empowered him in life gave him resurrected life, revealing that he was indeed eternally the Son. The life-giving Spirit continues the eternal divine energy and movement toward bringing all things into the loving embrace of the Trinitarian life of God. Those who turn toward this event of revelation with faith engage in a life-long journey of love toward God and toward all that God has created. They also look forward with hope toward a future event of redemption, in which finitude and temporality will find fulfillment within the Trinitarian life of God.
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
Comments
Post a Comment