On the Trinity

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.6 · 1.7–1.11 · 1.12–1.13 · 2.0–2.7 · 2.8–2.15 · 2.16–3.2 · 3.3–3.9 · 3.10–4.0 · 4.1–4.10 · 4.11–4.19 · 4.20–5.5 · 5.6–5.15 · 5.16–6.8 · 6.9–7.2 · 7.3–7.5 · 7.6–8.4 · 8.5–8.10 · 9.1–9.10 · 9.11–10.6 · 10.7–11.1 · 11.2–11.6 · 11.7–12.5 · 12.6–12.13 · 12.14–13.4 · 13.5–13.13 · 13.14–13.20 · 14.1–14.7 · 14.8–14.15 · 14.16–15.4 · 15.5–15.9 · 15.10–15.14 · 15.15–15.18 · 15.19–15.25 · 15.26–15.28

1. 1.1Augustine describes three kinds of error about God (thinking of him as a body, as a created spirit, or as something found nowhere at all) and explains why Scripture uses lowly images and why the mind must be cleansed to see God.
2. 1.2Augustine states his plan: first to show from Scripture that the Trinity is the one true God of one substance, then to offer reasoning for those who demand it.
3. 1.3Augustine asks his readers to inquire with him in love, to correct him where he errs, and not to blame him for misunderstandings of difficult matters.
4. 1.4Augustine sums up the catholic teaching: Father, Son and Spirit are one God of one substance and work inseparably, yet only the Son was born and crucified, only the Spirit came as a dove and as tongues of fire, and only the Father's voice spoke from heaven.
5. 1.5Augustine sets out the questions that trouble people: how three are one God, how the Trinity can work inseparably when only the Son became flesh, and how the Spirit is in the Trinity though not begotten.
6. 1.6Augustine proves from Scripture that the Son is true God of the same substance as the Father, that texts such as 'who alone has immortality' refer to the whole Trinity, and that the Holy Spirit is not a creature, since he receives the service due to God alone.
7. 1.7Augustine gives his rule for reading Scripture about Christ: in the form of God the Son is equal to the Father, in the form of a servant he is less, as Philippians 2 teaches, without either nature being changed into the other.
8. 1.8Augustine explains that the Son's being 'subjected' to the Father and 'handing over the kingdom' (1 Cor 15) mean that Christ will bring believers to the contemplation of God, in which Father, Son and Spirit are seen together, since none of them can be shown or enjoyed apart from the others.
9. 1.9Augustine explains that Christ's going away was needed so that the disciples would stop seeing only his servant form, and that whenever one person of the Trinity is said to be shown or to dwell in believers, the others are included.
10. 1.10Augustine explains that when Christ hands over the kingdom, believers will pass from faith to the contemplation of the whole Trinity, prefigured by Mary of Bethany, and Christ as priest will no longer need to intercede for them.
11. 1.11Augustine applies his rule to a series of texts: according to the form of God the Son is equal to the Father, according to the form of a servant he is less than the Father, than himself, and even than the Holy Spirit.
12. 1.12Augustine explains, by his rule of the two forms, sayings in which Christ seems to deny knowledge of the last day, the power to give places of glory, his own judgment, his own teaching, and faith in himself.
13. 1.13Augustine argues that at the judgment Christ will appear to good and wicked alike in the form of the Son of Man, while the vision of his divine form, the highest good and eternal life, is reserved for the pure in heart; this explains 'the Father judges no one' and 'no one is good but God alone.'
14. 2.0Augustine opens Book 2 by warning against presumption and the defense of error, and declares that he will seek God through Scripture and creation, preferring correction to flattery.
15. 2.1Augustine adds a third rule for reading Scripture about the Son: some texts show neither inequality nor equality but only that the Son is from the Father, so that they express his birth, not his inferiority.
16. 2.2Augustine says that ambiguous texts such as 'My teaching is not mine' can safely be read either of the servant form or of the Son's being from the Father, since the Son himself is the teaching.
17. 2.3Augustine shows that the Spirit's not speaking 'of himself' refers to his procession from the Father, not to inferiority, and postpones the question why the Spirit is not called a son.
18. 2.4Augustine answers the argument that the Father is greater because he glorifies the Son: the Spirit also glorifies the Son, and the Son glorifies the Father, so mutual glorifying implies equality.
19. 2.5Augustine argues that being sent does not make the Son or the Spirit less: both are sent to where they already were, and 'sending' means their visible appearance in a creature, which the invisible Father and Son brought about together.
20. 2.6Augustine explains why the Spirit is never called less than the Father: the dove and the fire were not united to the Spirit as Christ's humanity was united to the Word, but were passing signs, like the burning bush and the pillar of cloud.
21. 2.7Augustine raises the question of the Old Testament theophanies: was it the Father, the Son, the Spirit, or the whole Trinity that appeared to the fathers, did God appear through a creature formed for the purpose or through angels, and were the Son and Spirit 'sent' before the incarnation?
22. 2.8Augustine dismisses those who think the Son, as Word and Wisdom, is changeable and visible, noting that even the created soul is invisible and that texts on the 'invisible, only God' refer to the whole Trinity.
23. 2.9Augustine reports the view that the Son was visible and changeable, and so 'mortal', even before the incarnation, rejects it, and sets the question whether the theophanies were of God without distinction, of one person, or of each person in turn.
24. 2.10Augustine examines the appearances of God to Adam and to Abraham and finds that Scripture does not make clear whether the Father, the Son, the Spirit, or the Trinity spoke, noting that the three men at Mamre are addressed both as three and as one Lord.
25. 2.11Augustine suggests that the three equal men at Mamre visibly intimate the equality of the Trinity, one substance in three persons, rather than the Son alone with two angels.
26. 2.12Augustine notes that Lot addresses the two angels both as 'lords' and as 'Lord,' and suggests that they may signify the Son and the Holy Spirit, since they said they were sent.
27. 2.13Augustine discusses the burning bush, where the 'angel of the Lord' speaks as God, and leaves open whether an angel bore the person of the Son, the Spirit, the Father, or the Trinity, or whether a creature was formed for the occasion.
28. 2.14Augustine says that God plainly appeared through a creature in the pillar of cloud and fire, but that Scripture does not show which person, or whether the Trinity, appeared.
29. 2.15Augustine argues that the fire, cloud and voices at Sinai were creatures serving the Creator, not God's substance, and tentatively suggests that the Holy Spirit is signified there, since the Law was written by the 'finger of God' and given fifty days after the Passover, as the Spirit came fifty days after Easter.
30. 2.16Augustine notes that although the Lord spoke with Moses 'face to face,' Moses still asked to see God himself, showing that what he saw bodily was not God's substance, which cannot be seen with bodily eyes.
31. 2.17Augustine interprets God's 'back parts' shown to Moses as Christ's flesh, seen by faith in his resurrection from the 'rock' of the catholic Church, and his 'face' as the form of God that no one can see in this life; he concludes that the Father too may have appeared through creatures, since the visions signified God without showing his substance.
32. 2.18Augustine points to Daniel's vision of the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man as evidence that the Father too appeared in bodily form, and concludes that one should not rashly say which person appeared in a theophany unless the context gives probable indications, since God's essence itself cannot be seen.
33. 3.0In the prologue to Book 3 Augustine explains why he writes on the Trinity, asks readers not to treat his books like Scripture and correctors to correct him from Scripture and sound reason, and recapitulates the questions about the sendings and the theophanies left from Book 2.
34. 3.1Augustine turns to the second question, whether theophanies were made through creatures formed for the purpose or through angels, leaving aside how angels assume or transform bodies, and affirms that God's will reaches through spiritual creatures to all visible effects.
35. 3.2Augustine distinguishes the ordinary natural order, which God's will governs though custom hides it, from rarer events that philosophers attribute only to proximate causes, and begins an illustration from the rational soul, which can partake of God's unchangeable wisdom.
36. 3.3Augustine illustrates how the will of God is the first cause of all effects with the example of a wise man who, at God's command, undertakes a work of mercy using helpers, animals and lifeless things, all of which are moved ultimately by God's will through the righteous soul.
37. 3.4Augustine describes how God's will, presiding over the angels in heaven, governs the whole ordered creation, and argues that if Paul could signify Christ by speech, letter and the sacrament of his body and blood, God can much more signify himself through visible creatures without his substance appearing.
38. 3.5Augustine argues that the same divine power works both ordinary natural processes and miracles, which differ only in being unusual, citing Elijah's rain, the thunders of Sinai, the wine at Cana, Aaron's rod, and Moses' rod turned into a serpent.
39. 3.6Augustine says that the same God who gives life in the womb raised the dead, and that events are called natural when they follow the usual course and mighty works when they are unusual and meant to admonish.
40. 3.7Augustine explains that magicians' wonders are done through fallen angels who have power only as God permits, to deceive the deceitful, to warn the faithful, or to test the righteous, as with Pharaoh's magicians and Job.
41. 3.8Augustine explains that neither evil nor good angels are creators: God alone creates, having placed hidden 'seeds' in the elements which angels, men or animals can only bring to light, as Jacob's rods affected the colors of the flocks without his creating them.
42. 3.9Augustine distinguishes God, who alone creates from the inmost causes, from angels and men, who only apply outward causes to the 'seeds' God placed in the world; evil angels can do this only as far as God permits, which is why Pharaoh's magicians failed at the gnats.
43. 3.10Augustine explains that miracles and signs, whether done by angels or by men, can bear the person of God, illustrates this with prophets, Jacob's stone, Moses' rod and the bread of the sacrament, admits he cannot know how angels do these things, and affirms that God, being unchangeable, is still less visible.
44. 3.11Augustine concludes from Hebrews, Acts and Galatians that the Old Testament theophanies and even the giving of the Law were done through angels speaking or acting in the person of God, never through God's own substance, and leaves for the next book the difference between these and the sendings of the Son and the Spirit.
45. 4.0In the prologue to Book 4 Augustine praises the self-knowledge that recognizes its own weakness above knowledge of the heavens, prays that he may write nothing false, and affirms that God's essence is wholly unchangeable in eternity, truth and love.
46. 4.1Augustine explains that God had to show us both how much he loved us, lest we despair, and what kind of people he loved, sinners, lest we be proud; and he describes the Word, in whom all created things exist unchangeably as life and who is the light of rational minds.
47. 4.2Augustine explains that the Word became flesh to cleanse us for participation in him: the righteous God-man took our mortality to make us partakers of his divinity, and his single death fits our double death as one to two, like the octave in music.
48. 4.3Augustine explains how Christ's single death and resurrection, in his body alone, answer our double death of soul and body: they are a sacrament of the inner man's death to sin and renewal, and an example of the outer man's bodily death and future resurrection.
49. 4.4Augustine explains that one, two and three make six, the 'perfect number', and traces its significance in the six days of creation, the six ages of the world, the healing of the bent woman, the barren fig tree, and the calendar.
50. 4.5Augustine connects the forty-six years of the temple's building with the 276 days (46 × 6) from Christ's conception on 25 March to his birth on 25 December, since the temple signified his body.
51. 4.6Augustine shows that Christ's three days in the tomb were partial days, counts forty hours from his death to the resurrection and thirty-six from his burial, and relates these numbers to perfection and to the ratio of one to two, while allowing that others may find better explanations.
52. 4.7Augustine says that all the Old Testament signs foreshadowed the one Christ, priest and sacrifice, so that we who had fallen away into many things might be gathered by the one Mediator into unity with the one God.
53. 4.8Augustine introduces Christ's prayer in John 17 that believers may be one as the Father and the Son are one.
54. 4.9Augustine explains that Christ asks that believers be one in him, as the Father and the Son are one in substance and will, through a common nature and a common will united by love.
55. 4.10Augustine contrasts the devil, the mediator of death, who leads the proud to ruin through pride, false philosophy and magical rites, with Christ, the humble Mediator of life.
56. 4.11Augustine says that demons can easily work wonders through aerial bodies, as acrobats astonish theater crowds, but a faithful soul neither envies nor esteems them, since the saints have done far greater things by God's power.
57. 4.12Augustine argues that souls are not cleansed by magical rites, since the devil, the false mediator, blocks the way; as the Magi returned by another way, so we return by Christ's humility. The devil brought our double death by his single death of the spirit, while Christ met us in bodily death by righteousness, making his death a sacrifice for sin.
58. 4.13Augustine explains that Christ died not by necessity but by his own will, and that the devil, who brought death to man, was justly defeated when he killed the innocent Christ, so that by Christ's just blood unjustly shed the bond of death was cancelled and sinners redeemed; the proud who despise Christ's death will share the devil's eternal punishment.
59. 4.14Augustine argues that a true sacrifice is owed to God alone and that Christ is the perfect priest and sacrifice: sinless, offering human and mortal flesh born of a virgin, at once the one who offers, the offering, one with God to whom it is offered, and making one those for whom it is offered.
60. 4.15Augustine criticizes philosophers who think they can purify themselves by their own power because they have glimpsed unchangeable truth: they see the homeland from afar but in pride refuse the wood of the cross that carries the humble there.
61. 4.16Augustine argues that philosophers who know God's eternal reasons are not therefore authorities on the resurrection or the course of history, since they learn natural and historical facts from experience and cannot foresee the future as prophets do.
62. 4.17Augustine distinguishes kinds of foreknowledge: conjecture from experience, demons' perception of what is already on its way, revelation through angels, and direct prophetic vision by the Holy Spirit; the philosophers, though they knew something of God, were not given knowledge of the ages and the resurrection, which was revealed to the prophets.
63. 4.18Augustine explains that we, being temporal and changeable, had to be cleansed through faith in temporal events, so the eternal Truth came into being as man, was born, died, rose and ascended, that our faith might become truth and our mortality be changed into eternity.
64. 4.19Augustine defines the Son's sending as everything done in time to produce cleansing faith; all creation bore witness to him; he was sent as made of a woman, lesser insofar as made, yet equal to the Father who sends; and before and even after the incarnation his divinity was not seen.
65. 4.20Augustine explains that the Son is sent not because he is less but because he is from the Father, as Wisdom is the 'brightness of eternal light' equal to its source; sending means being made known in time, by the incarnation or in the mind; the Father is never sent, since he is from no one; and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and also from the Son, the Father being the principle of the whole deity.
66. 4.21Augustine explains that the inseparable Trinity is shown separably through visible creatures, as memory, understanding and will together produce each of their names; he restates that pre-incarnation theophanies were done through angels, that the Word became man with a human body and rational soul, and that being sent implies no inequality, closing Book 4.
67. 5.1Augustine begins his reply to the Arians by asking God's help and the reader's patience, and teaches that God must be thought of without the categories of bodily things.
68. 5.2God is substance or essence in the truest sense, because he alone is unchangeable being, as his name “I am who I am” shows.
69. 5.3Augustine states the Arian argument that “unbegotten” and “begotten” name different substances, and answers it from John 10:30 and Phil 2:6.
70. 5.4An accident is something that can be lost or changed; since nothing in God can be lost, increased, or decreased, there is no accident in God.
71. 5.5In God nothing is said by accident, but not everything is said by substance: “Father” and “Son” are said relatively, and this eternal relation is not an accident.
72. 5.6Augustine answers the objection that “unbegotten” is said absolutely: the Son is equal to the Father only by what is said of him in himself, so they share one substance, and “unbegotten” only denies a relation.
73. 5.7Adding a negative does not change a term's category, so “unbegotten” (“not begotten,” “not son”) remains a term of relation and does not show a different substance.
74. 5.8What is said of God absolutely is said of each person and of the Trinity in the singular (one God, one great, one good, one Almighty); Augustine notes that the Greeks say “one ousia, three hypostases.”
75. 5.9Latin usage says “one essence or substance, three persons,” not “three substances”; “persons” is said not to express the mystery but so as not to be silent.
76. 5.10God is not great by sharing in greatness but is his own greatness, so we speak of one greatness and one great one, and likewise for goodness, eternity, and omnipotence.
77. 5.11Names proper to each person are relative; the Holy Spirit is so called relatively as the gift of the Father and the Son, a kind of unspeakable communion of both.
78. 5.12That there is no matching term (“Father of the Spirit”) does not stop the Spirit's name being relative; the correspondence is “gift of the giver” and “giver of the gift.”
79. 5.13The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each called “beginning” in relation to creation, yet together they are one beginning, as one Creator and one God.
80. 5.14The Father begets the Son; the Spirit goes forth not as born but as given, and so the Father and the Son are one beginning of the Holy Spirit.
81. 5.15The Holy Spirit proceeds eternally as one who can be given, and so is eternally a gift, though he is “given” only in time.
82. 5.16Names said of God from a point in time, such as Lord, refuge, or Father of the adopted, are relative and imply change only in creatures, never in God's unchangeable substance.
83. 6.1Augustine examines an anti-Arian argument from 1 Cor 1:24 that seems to imply the Father is wise only by the wisdom he begot.
84. 6.2Augustine tests where the argument leads: if the Father were wise only with the Son, then neither would be God without the other, and he examines John 1:1 and “God from God” on that view.
85. 6.3Scripture calls things “one” without qualification only when they share one nature; the Father and the Son are one in substance, and equality in any one attribute means equality in all.
86. 6.4As the virtues in a mind cannot be unequal one by one, so in the simple divine substance the Son, equal in one thing, is equal in all and of one substance with the Father.
87. 6.5The Holy Spirit, the common love or communion of the Father and the Son, is equal and consubstantial with them: lover, beloved, and love itself.
88. 6.6Every creature, body and soul alike, is manifold rather than simple, because its qualities can vary independently and it is changeable.
89. 6.7God's many attributes are one in him, and the Trinity is not “threefold”; the Father is “alone” Father only in that both are not Father together.
90. 6.8Each person is as great as the three together, because perfection cannot grow by joining; God is therefore a Trinity, not threefold.
91. 6.9Augustine asks how John 17:3 (“you, the one true God”) and 1 Cor 11:3 (“the head of Christ is God”) fit with the one God being the whole Trinity, and defers a full answer.
92. 6.10Augustine interprets Hilary's formula “eternity in the Father, form in the Image, use in the Gift,” finding in it the Spirit as the delight of Father and Son, and a trace of the Trinity in the unity, form, and order of creatures.
93. 7.1Augustine shows that if the Father were wise only by the wisdom he begot, he would not even exist in himself; so the Father is himself wisdom, and the Son is wisdom from wisdom, one wisdom and one essence.
94. 7.2The Father and the Son are together one essence and one wisdom, but not one Word or one Son, since “Word” and “Son” are relative terms; the Word is “born wisdom.”
95. 7.3Scripture speaks of wisdom chiefly as the Son because he is the Image we are to imitate; yet the Father and the Holy Spirit are also wisdom and light, and the three are one wisdom, one essence, one God.
96. 7.4Augustine explains that “person” (Latin) and “hypostasis/substance” (Greek) are words found by necessity to answer “three what?”, though no specific or general name properly fits the three.
97. 7.5Strictly, “substance” fits changeable things that underlie accidents; God is called substance only loosely and is properly essence, so “three persons” may be more fitting than “three substances.”
98. 7.6Neither genus–species nor common matter (three statues from one gold) explains “three persons, one essence”; Augustine shows how Scripture's plurals signify relations and how man is made “to the image” of the Trinity, and urges faith where understanding fails.
99. 8.0Augustine sums up the earlier books: relative names belong to each person, what is said absolutely is said of the one God, and no person is less than the Trinity; he will now treat the same truths more inwardly, holding by faith what is not yet understood.
100. 8.1In God greatness is truth, and no person is more truly than another, so two or three persons together are not greater than one.
101. 8.2Unlike bodies, God's greatness is his truth; Augustine urges the reader to reject every bodily or changeable image and hold for a moment the thought “God is truth.”
102. 8.3All things we love are good, but beyond this or that good is good itself, which is God; the mind becomes good only by turning in love to this unchangeable good.
103. 8.4We must love God before we see him, and so love him by faith; but faith must not invent false images, and in believing bodily things what matters is the general knowledge of their kind, not imagined details.
104. 8.5We believe Christ's virgin birth and resurrection through our general knowledge of such things, but we have no such knowledge of any other trinity or God, so Augustine asks how we can love the Trinity we do not yet know.
105. 8.6We love the apostle as a just mind, and we know what justice is not from the senses but from an inner truth, the form of justice, which we must love and cleave to in order to become just.
106. 8.7The key to knowing God is true love; love of God and of neighbour imply each other, and God, who is love, is found not by seeking powers outside us but within, by humble love.
107. 8.8Whoever loves his brother knows love, and God is love; so in brotherly love God is known, and the two commandments cannot be separated.
108. 8.9We love Paul because we see in the unchangeable truth the form of justice by which he lived; faith and hope in such lives make us love that form, God, more ardently and know him more clearly.
109. 8.10Love involves three, the lover, the beloved, and love; Augustine pauses here as at the place where the search for the Trinity must begin.
110. 9.1Augustine insists that we are still seeking: holding firmly by faith that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, we seek to understand without rash affirmation.
111. 9.2Turning to man as an unequal image of God, Augustine finds that when the mind loves itself there seem to be only two, mind and love, which are relatively two but one spirit.
112. 9.3The mind cannot love itself without knowing itself, and, being incorporeal, it knows itself through itself, not by comparison with other minds.
113. 9.4Mind, its love, and its knowledge are three and one, and when perfect, equal; love and knowledge exist substantially, not as accidents, and are neither parts of the mind nor mixed together.
114. 9.5In mind, knowledge, and love each is in itself, each in the others, and all in all, inseparable yet each a substance, and all together one substance.
115. 9.6Each knows his own mind by experience but knows what a mind ought to be in the unchangeable truth above the mind, by which we judge images, people, and works of art.
116. 9.7From the eternal truth we conceive true knowledge as an inner word, which precedes every outward word and deed and is conceived by love, either of the creature or of the Creator.
117. 9.8The inner word is conceived by desire when the creature is loved for itself, by love when it is referred to God; love joins the mind and its word as a third.
118. 9.9In love of spiritual things the word is born as soon as it is conceived; in love of temporal things it is born only when its object is obtained, and that never satisfies.
119. 9.10The word Augustine means is knowledge joined with love; when the mind knows and loves itself, its word and its love are joined to it and to each other.
120. 9.11Knowledge is like what it knows; our knowledge of God is an unequal likeness, but the mind's knowledge of itself is its perfectly equal word and image.
121. 9.12Love is not called begotten like knowledge because it proceeds as the desire that seeks and then embraces knowledge; so mind, knowledge (its word), and love are an image of the Trinity, three and one substance.
122. 10.1No one loves a wholly unknown thing: those eager to learn love a known form of learning, or knowing itself, for the sake of which they seek what they do not yet know.
123. 10.2Seekers love either a known kind, a form seen in the eternal reason, a known end, or knowing itself; nothing wholly unknown is loved. Augustine now asks what happens when the mind seeks to know itself.
124. 10.3When the mind seeks to know itself it cannot love an unknown self; Augustine tests several explanations and concludes that by seeking itself the mind already knows itself as seeking and not knowing.
125. 10.4The mind cannot know itself only in part: knowing that it lives, that it knows, and that it is seeking itself, it knows itself as a whole, so in a sense it does not need to seek itself at all.
126. 10.5The command to know oneself means to think on oneself and keep one's place under God; turning from God, the mind becomes absorbed in bodily things and carries their images within it, though it keeps its power to judge them.
127. 10.6The mind errs when it loves bodily images so much that it thinks itself to be a body, though it still distinguishes images from bodies except in sleep, madness, or ecstasy.
128. 10.7Thinking itself a body, the mind has been identified by philosophers with blood, brain, heart, atoms, air, fire, or the body's tempering; but it is present to itself and need not seek itself as though absent.
129. 10.8The mind fails to see itself because it has glued to itself the images of bodies it loves; to know itself it must withdraw what it has added and turn its attention back on itself.
130. 10.9“Know yourself” is unlike any command to know something absent: the mind fulfils it in the very act of understanding it, because it is present to itself.
131. 10.10Whatever the mind doubts, it cannot doubt that it lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges; since it is certain of itself and not of being any body, it is none of those bodies.
132. 10.11Memory, understanding, and will are three by their mutual relations but one life, one mind, one essence, each containing the others wholly, and so equal.
133. 10.12Before ascending to God, Augustine proposes to show memory, understanding, and will more distinctly in the mind's knowledge of outward things acquired in time, in the next book.
134. 11.1Augustine proposes to look for a trace of the Trinity even in the outer man, starting with the sense of sight.
135. 11.2In bodily sight three distinct things, the visible body, the vision formed in the sense, and the will that joins them, come together into a kind of unity.
136. 11.3When the body is absent, a second trinity arises within: the image held in memory, the inner vision of thought, and the will that joins them.
137. 11.4The inner trinity of memory, inner vision, and will parallels the outer one, but its three members are of one substance, since all of it is one mind.
138. 11.5The outer trinity is not the image of God, though like every good thing it bears some likeness to God, and in it the will faintly suggests the person of the Spirit.
139. 11.6Every particular will has its own end, but all should be referred to the final end of a happy life, and right wills linked together form a road of ascent.
140. 11.7In the inner trinity the image in memory and the image in thought are only figuratively parent and offspring, and the will, which presupposes some memory of what it seeks, is neither.
141. 11.8Memory sets the limit of all thinking about bodies, and the will both joins and separates sense, memory, and thought.
142. 11.9Four appearances arise in sequence from the body to thought, and the will joins each pair, but only two of these joinings form trinities properly so called.
143. 11.10False imaginings arise when the will combines elements of things remembered, so that all thinking of bodies still depends on memory, while reason reaches beyond imagination.
144. 11.11Measure belongs to memory, number to vision, and weight to will; Augustine now turns to seek the image of God in the inner man.
145. 12.1Whatever we share with the beasts belongs to the outer man; our upright posture reminds us to raise the mind to spiritual things.
146. 12.2Some uses of memory and imagination already involve reason and are not shared with beasts, but judging bodily things by eternal reasons belongs to a higher reason.
147. 12.3The part of reason that manages temporal things is drawn from the contemplative mind as Eve was taken from Adam, so that the two are one mind as husband and wife are one flesh.
148. 12.4The trinity must be sought in the whole mind, but the image of God is found only in the part that contemplates eternal things.
149. 12.5Augustine rejects the view that man, woman, and child form the image of the Trinity, though he grants that the woman, coming from the man without being his daughter, shows that not every procession is a begetting.
150. 12.6From Gen 1:26–27 Augustine shows that man was made in the image of the whole Trinity, the one God, and that Scripture does not place that image in father, mother, and child.
151. 12.7Interpreting 1 Cor 11:7 with Gen 1:27, Augustine holds that woman as well as man is the image of God in the rational mind, where there is no sex, and reads the veil as a figure of reason directed to temporal things.
152. 12.8The fall of Adam and Eve figures the mind's fall when the reason that manages temporal things slides outward and the contemplative part consents.
153. 12.9The soul's love of its own power makes it fall from the common whole to a private part, so that it becomes entangled in bodily things and their images.
154. 12.10Errors in temporal action made with a good will are human temptations, but setting one's final good in bodily things is a spiritual fornication into which the soul slides by degrees.
155. 12.11By a desire to be like God under no one, the soul falls through itself to the likeness of beasts, and it can return only by the grace of God through Christ.
156. 12.12The fall in Gen 3 figures how sin arises in one mind: delight in thought is the woman eating alone, and the decision to act is her giving to the man, yet even sins of thought need forgiveness.
157. 12.13Augustine notes the earlier reading of man and woman as mind and sense, prefers to see the senses in the serpent, and concludes that the mind must use temporal things for the sake of eternal ones.
158. 12.14Augustine distinguishes wisdom, the contemplation of eternal things, from knowledge, the rational management of temporal things, citing Job 28:28 and 1 Cor 12:8.
159. 12.15Augustine rejects Plato's doctrine of recollection and Pythagorean transmigration, explains learning by divine illumination, and proposes to seek a trinity in the knowledge of temporal things.
160. 13.1Using the prologue of John, Augustine shows that some truths belong to wisdom and others, done in time, to knowledge, and that faith is seen by each believer within himself.
161. 13.2Faith is a thing of the heart, seen by each only in himself; the faith of all believers is called one in kind, as their will is one when they will the same thing.
162. 13.3Some wills, such as wanting to buy cheap and sell dear, are commonly shared, but only the will to be happy is truly found in everyone.
163. 13.4All want happiness, yet they disagree about what it is, which raises the puzzle of how all can love what not all know.
164. 13.5Following Cicero, Augustine rejects the idea that happiness is living as one wishes and concludes that only one who has all he wants and wants nothing wrongly is happy.
165. 13.6Men perversely prefer having what they want to wanting rightly, though a good will brings one nearer to happiness.
166. 13.7In this life faith is needed, for only in the life to come will the good live as they will; the philosophers' boast of living as they will is pitiable, and happiness requires immortality.
167. 13.8Since no one can be happy who loses life against his will or is indifferent to losing it, true happiness must be everlasting.
168. 13.9Philosophers barely reached the soul's immortality, but faith promises immortality to the whole man, made credible by the Word becoming flesh.
169. 13.10No way of freeing humanity was more fitting than the incarnation and death of the Son, which shows God's love; even our merits are God's gifts.
170. 13.11Augustine raises the question how we are justified by Christ's blood if the Father already loved us before the world was made, and affirms that Father, Son, and Spirit act together.
171. 13.12Through the sin of the first man God justly permitted the human race to fall under the devil's power, yet without letting it go from his own power and goodness.
172. 13.13God chose to overcome the devil by justice rather than power, setting the order that justice comes first and power follows at the judgment.
173. 13.14The devil was conquered by Christ's justice, since he killed one who owed nothing, and then by his power in the resurrection; for this Christ had to be both man and God.
174. 13.15The devil was conquered at the very moment he seemed to win, when Christ's sinless blood was shed as the price of our redemption.
175. 13.16Death and the evils of this life remain after forgiveness as a field of trial for the faithful; Christ's undeserved death frees the predestined, and God's wrath is just retribution, not passion.
176. 13.17Other benefits of the incarnation: it shows man's place in creation, commends grace without prior merit, heals pride by God's humility, gives an example of obedience, and defeats the devil through the race he had conquered.
177. 13.18God took the Mediator's humanity from Adam's race, yet from a virgin conceiving by faith without concupiscence, so that the devil was conquered by the race he had conquered.
178. 13.19What the Word made flesh did in time belongs to knowledge, his eternal being to wisdom; Christ is both our knowledge and our wisdom, which the philosophers missed by refusing the Mediator.
179. 13.20Augustine sums up: happiness requires faith in Christ, and the faith held in memory, recalled, and loved forms a trinity in the inner man, though not yet the image of God.
180. 14.1Augustine turns to human wisdom, which is the worship of God (θεοσέβεια), and recalls the distinction between wisdom, knowledge of divine things, and knowledge of human things.
181. 14.2The trinity formed by remembering, contemplating, and loving our faith is not yet the image of God, because faith will pass away when we see face to face.
182. 14.3The image of God must lie in something as lasting as the immortal soul; the later memory of our faith would form a different trinity, as the memory of a vanished body differs from seeing it.
183. 14.4The image of God is in the rational soul, which can know God; it always remains, though it may be deformed, and the mind always knows itself.
184. 14.5Even an infant's mind may know itself without thinking of itself, because its attention is drawn outward to the senses; a man finds the truth about his mind only within himself.
185. 14.6The mind is in its own sight only when it thinks of itself, yet it always knows itself as a kind of memory of itself; from this Augustine sets out the trinity of memory, understanding, and will.
186. 14.7The mind knows many things it is not thinking of; in its inner memory, understanding, and will of itself, joined through the inner word of thought, lies the image of the Trinity, which Books 11–13 prepared for.
187. 14.8The mind remembering, understanding, and loving itself is the image of God, not a trinity formed from adventitious things that enter the mind in time, such as learned facts or faith.
188. 14.9With Cicero's Hortensius Augustine asks whether the four virtues continue in the life to come, holding that justice and in some form the others remain, though their present works will pass.
189. 14.10Unlike knowledge of temporal things, which follows its objects in time, the mind has always remembered, understood, and loved itself; when it thinks of itself a trinity with an inner word arises, and there the image is to be recognized.
190. 14.11Answering the objection that memory is only of the past, Augustine shows from usage, including Virgil, that the mind's self-presence can rightly be called memory.
191. 14.12The mind's trinity is the image of God because it can remember, understand, and love its Maker; doing so is wisdom, while not to be with God, in whom we exist, is great misery.
192. 14.13As a man can be reminded of a forgotten acquaintance, the nations that forgot God can be reminded and turn back to him.
193. 14.14Rightly loving itself, the mind loves God; though weak and erring it never loses memory, understanding, and love of itself, and when it clings to God it will be one spirit with him and unchangeable.
194. 14.15The mind does not remember its lost happiness in paradise, which it knows only by Scripture, but it does remember God, in whose light even the ungodly see the unchangeable rules of justice.
195. 14.16The image of God is re-formed in the mind by God, not by itself; Augustine explains Paul's “spirit of the mind” and shows that the renewal takes place in the mind, where the image is.
196. 14.17Baptism forgives all sins at once, but the renewal of God's image proceeds gradually, by God's help, until it is perfected in the sight of God.
197. 14.18John's “we shall be like him” may refer to the full sight of God or to the immortal body, in which we are conformed to the incarnate Son alone.
198. 14.19The image of the Trinity will be perfected by the sight of God after the judgment, which is eternal life; Cicero's praise of contemplative philosophy falls short without faith in the Mediator.
199. 15.1Having reached the mind as God's image, Augustine turns to what is above it, God, and proposes to show by reason as well as Scripture that God is a Trinity.
200. 15.2God, though incomprehensible, is to be sought always, faith seeking and understanding finding; and it was right to seek traces of the Trinity in creatures first, as Wisdom 13 shows.
201. 15.3Augustine summarizes the argument of the previous fourteen books of On the Trinity.
202. 15.4The whole of nature, as well as Scripture, proclaims a Maker who must be confessed to be supremely living, wise, unchangeable, spiritual, and good.
203. 15.5Since everything said of God applies to the whole Trinity and to each person, and in God's simple nature all attributes are his substance, Augustine reduces the many attributes to three: eternal, wise, and happy.
204. 15.6Augustine asks how God, who is simply wisdom, can be understood as a Trinity, recalls the course of the earlier books, and proposes wisdom, its self-knowledge, and its self-love as a trinity like that in the human mind.
205. 15.7The trinity in the human mind is something a man has, not what he is, and its three operate only through one another, whereas each divine person is himself memory, understanding, and love; God's timeless knowledge surpasses all comprehension.
206. 15.8Paul's “mirror” means an image, and the image through which we now see God is ourselves, being transformed by grace from glory to glory.
207. 15.9An enigma is an obscure allegory, so seeing “in an enigma” means seeing God through a likeness that is hard to make out, as our own thought is both seen and not seen.
208. 15.10Thought is the speech of the heart, as the Gospels show, and the inner word, prior to any language, offers some likeness of the Word who was with God.
209. 15.11The inner word, not the spoken word, resembles the Word of God: as our word takes up voice without being changed into it, so the Word took flesh without being changed, and as works begin from a word, all things were made through the Word.
210. 15.12Against the Academic skeptics, Augustine argues that much is truly known, above all that one lives, and also much learned through the senses and the testimony of others; from such knowledge the true inner word is born.
211. 15.13God learns nothing through senses or messengers but knows all things eternally, and creatures exist because he knows them; so our knowledge and word are far unlike his knowledge and the Word born of the Father's essence.
212. 15.14The Word, wholly what the Father is but not the Father, knows all things from the Father as he is from him, and Father and Son see all things at once.
213. 15.15Our word, unlike the divine Word, can be false, is not our essence, and depends on passing thought, so only God has a Word eternal and coeternal with himself.
214. 15.16The Son is called God's Word, not God's thought, since nothing in God revolves or takes form; even in glory our likeness to God will never be equality of nature.
215. 15.17Though each person is love, as each is wisdom, the Holy Spirit is properly called love, the common love of Father and Son, proceeding principally from the Father and also from the Son; 1 John 4 shows this.
216. 15.18Love is the greatest gift of God, without which no other gift profits, and the love that is from God and is God is properly the Holy Spirit, rightly called the Gift of God.
217. 15.19Scripture calls the Holy Spirit the Gift of God (John 4 and 7, Eph 4, Acts); he is given yet gives himself as God, and he is properly called love as the Spirit common to Father and Son, though not the only love in the Trinity.
218. 15.20Augustine refutes Eunomius's claim that the Son is a son of God's will rather than of his nature, and sums up: the human mind's memory, understanding, and will are an image, though a very unlike one, of the Trinity.
219. 15.21Augustine recalls how memory and understanding suggested the Father and the Son, and will or love the Holy Spirit, while noting that each of the three in the mind contains the others.
220. 15.22In man memory, understanding, and love belong to one person who has them, whereas the one God is three persons.
221. 15.23The trinity of one human person is only an unequal image of the three-personed God, whose persons are more inseparable than the mind's three powers; we see the Trinity now through the image, later face to face.
222. 15.24Those who see the trinity in their mind but not that it is God's image miss the One it reflects; without the faith that cleanses the heart, their understanding condemns them, darkened as it is by the penalty of sin.
223. 15.25Those who belong to Christ, freed by his blood from the devil's power, rest in peace until the resurrection and will then see clearly why the Holy Spirit is not a Son, a question Augustine admits he could not illustrate adequately.
224. 15.26The Spirit of both Father and Son proceeds from both without time, principally from the Father, who gave the Son in begetting him that the Spirit proceed from him too; Christ gave the Spirit twice, as God, and received him as man from his conception.
225. 15.27Quoting his own sermon, Augustine explains why the Spirit proceeds from both and is not a son; those who cannot see this should believe Scripture and seek understanding, and his soul, still wounded, cannot yet fix its gaze on the light.
226. 15.28Augustine ends the work with a prayer to the triune God, confessing the faith he has sought to understand and asking pardon for his many words.