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| Beginning of Augustine's De Trinitate (12th c., England) |
“The purpose of all the Catholic commentators I have been able to read on the divine books of both testaments, who have written before me on the trinity which God is, have been to teach that according to the scriptures Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the inseparable equality of one substance present a divine unity; and therefore there are not three gods but one God; although indeed the Father has begotten the Son, and therefore he who is the Father is not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and therefore he who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself coequal to the Father and the Son, and belonging to the threefold unity.At least three things are worth noting about this passage. First, Augustine understands the doctrine of the Trinity to derive from biblical exegesis; the teaching he relates is "according to the scriptures." Accordingly, he devotes nearly a quarter of the work to scriptural interpretation.
“It was not however these same three (their teaching continues) that was born of the virgin Mary, crucified and buried under Pontius Pilate, rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven, but the Son alone. Nor was it this same three that came down upon Jesus in the form of a dove at his baptism, or came down on the day of Pentecost after the Lord’s ascension, with a roaring sound from heaven as though a violent gust were rushing down, and in divided tongues as of fire, but the Holy Spirit alone. Nor was it this same three that spoke from heaven, You are my Son, either at his baptism by John (Mk 1:11), or on the mountain when the three disciples were with him (Mt 17:5), nor when the resounding voice was heard, I will have both glorified it (my name) and will glorify if again (Jn 12:28), but it was the Father’s voice alone addressing the Son; although just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably. This is also my faith inasmuch as it is the Catholic faith.” (Trin. 1.4.7, trans. Edmund Hill)
Second, Augustine's exposition of the faith of the church proceeds also by grammatical analysis of language about God. In an important section of De Trinitate, he shows that such predications as "unbegotten", "begotten," and "procession" do not entail a difference of substance among the divine persons, but one of relation. In so doing, he displays the logic of the teaching that while the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
Third, Augustine insists on the unity of the external acts of the Trinity: "just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably." In other words, Augustine is arguing that the scriptural language should not be taken to suggest that it is the Father who creates, the Son who redeems, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies; rather, the One Lord, who is trinity, works to create, redeem and sanctify his creatures. I take Augustine's point in the second paragraph to be essentially that the ways in which scripture and creed appropriate particular actions to particular Persons (i.e., the Incarnation to the Son) are properly understood in this light.
Augustine largely fulfills his goal of giving reasons for the doctrine of the Trinity in Books V–VII, where he displays the grammar of the doctrine of the Trinity, after having established the scriptural authority for that doctrine in Books I–IV. The purview of Books VIII–XV is to show why and how our minds must be purified in order to behold the Triune Lord. Put too simply, he argues that faith in Christ the Mediator lifts our gaze to the Triune Lord, so that, by God's gift, the imago trinitatis (i.e., the mind's remembering, knowing and loving its Lord) might be renewed through growth in the love of God. Augustine closes the De Trinitate with a prayer that aptly summarizes the work—"for Augustine does not so much as speak of God as he speaks to God"*—and draws it to its proper end:
“O Lord our God, we believe in you, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Truth would not have said, Go and baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19), unless you were a triad [Trinitas]. Nor would you have commanded us to be baptized, Lord God, in the name of any who is not Lord God. Nor would it have been said with divine authority, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God (Dt 6:4), unless while being a triad [Trinitas] you were still one Lord God. And if you, God and Father, were yourself also the Son your Word Jesus Christ, were yourself also your gift the Holy Spirit, we would not read in the documents of truth God sent his Son (Gal 4:4), nor would you, only-begotten one, have said of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name (Jn 14:26), and, whom I will send you from the Father (Jn 15:26). Directing my attention to this rule of faith as best I could, as far as you enabled me to, I have sought you and desired to see intellectually what I have believed, and I have argued much and toiled much. O Lord my God, my one hope, listen to me lest out of weariness I should stop wanting to seek you, but let me see your face always, and with ardor. Do you yourself give me the strength to seek, having caused yourself to be found and having given me the hope of finding you more and more. Before you lies my strength and my weakness; preserve the one, heal the other. Before you lies my knowledge and my ignorance; where you have opened to me, receive me as I come in; where you have shut to me, open to me as I knock. Let me remember you, let me understand you, let me love you. Increase these things in me until you refashion me entirely.” (Trin. 15.28.51, tr. Edmund Hill)* Jean-Luc Marion, In the Self's Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine, p. 9.
1 comment:
Thanks for this very concise and apt summation of Augustine's thought on the Trinity.
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