On the Trinity 14.1–14.7

Now we must discuss wisdom: not the wisdom of God, which without doubt is God, for his only-begotten Son is called the wisdom of God; but we shall speak of the wisdom of man, yet true wisdom, which is according to God and is the true and chief worship of him, which in Greek is called by one name, θεοσέβεια. This name our writers, as we have already mentioned, wishing themselves also to translate by one word, rendered as “godliness” (pietas), although among the Greeks godliness is more usually called εὐσέβεια; but θεοσέβεια, because it cannot be rendered perfectly by one word, is better translated by two, so that it is rather called “the worship of God.” That this is the wisdom of man, as we have already laid down in the twelfth volume of this work, is shown by the authority of holy Scripture, in the book of God's servant Job, where we read that the wisdom of God said to man, “Behold, godliness is wisdom; and to abstain from evil is knowledge”; or also, as some have translated from the Greek ἐπιστήμην, “discipline,” which certainly took its name from learning (discendo), whence it can also be called knowledge. For each thing is learned for this purpose, that it may be known. Although in another sense, in the evils which each person suffers for his sins so that he may be corrected, the word “discipline” is commonly used. Hence that saying in the Letter to the Hebrews, “For what son is there to whom his father does not give discipline?” and, more plainly, in the same letter, “For all discipline for the present seems to be not of joy but of sorrow; but afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have contended through it.” God himself, then, is the supreme wisdom; but the worship of God is the wisdom of man, of which we are now speaking. For “the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” According to this wisdom, then, which is the worship of God, holy Scripture says, “The multitude of the wise is the health of the world.” But if to discuss wisdom belongs to the wise, what shall we do? Shall we dare to profess wisdom, lest our discussion of it be shameless? Shall we not be frightened by the example of Pythagoras? He, not having dared to profess himself wise, answered that he was rather a philosopher, that is, a lover of wisdom; and this name, which arose from him, so pleased later generations that, however much anyone seemed to himself or to others to excel in learning about the things that belong to wisdom, he was called nothing but a philosopher. Or did no such man dare to profess himself wise for this reason, that they thought the wise man to be without any sin? But our Scripture does not say this, which says, “Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.” For it surely judges that one whom it thinks should be rebuked has sin. But I do not dare to profess myself wise even in this sense; it is enough for me, what even they cannot deny, that it belongs also to a philosopher, that is, a lover of wisdom, to discuss wisdom. For those who professed themselves lovers of wisdom rather than wise did not cease to do this. And in discussing wisdom they defined it, saying, “Wisdom is the knowledge of human and divine things.” Hence I too, in the previous book, did not fail to say that the knowledge of both kinds of things, that is, divine and human, can be called both wisdom and knowledge. But according to that distinction by which the apostle said, “To one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge,” this definition is to be divided, so that the knowledge of divine things is properly called wisdom, and that of human things properly receives the name of knowledge; of which I treated in the thirteenth volume, not attributing to this knowledge whatever can be known by man in human affairs, where there is a great deal of superfluous vanity and harmful curiosity, but only that by which the most wholesome faith, which leads to true happiness, is begotten, nourished, defended, and strengthened; in which knowledge very many of the faithful are not strong, although they are very strong in faith itself. For it is one thing to know only what a man ought to believe in order to attain the happy life, which can only be eternal; another to know how this very thing may both help the godly and be defended against the ungodly, which the apostle seems to call by the proper name of knowledge. When I spoke of this earlier, I took care above all to commend faith itself, first briefly distinguishing eternal things from temporal, and there discussing temporal things, while deferring eternal things to this book; and I showed that even faith concerning eternal things is temporal, and dwells in time in the hearts of believers, yet is necessary for attaining eternal things themselves. I argued also that faith concerning the temporal things which the Eternal did and suffered for us in the man whom he bore in time and brought on to eternal things, profits for the same attaining of eternal things; and that the virtues themselves, by which in this temporal mortality one lives prudently, bravely, temperately, and justly, are not true virtues unless they are referred to that same faith, temporal though it is, which yet leads on to eternal things.

Therefore, since, as it is written, “As long as we are in the body we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight,” certainly, as long as the just man lives by faith, although he lives according to the inner man, although through this same temporal faith he strives toward the truth and stretches toward eternal things, yet in the retaining, contemplating, and loving of this temporal faith there is not yet such a trinity as should now be called the image of God; lest that should seem to be set among temporal things which must be set among eternal ones. For when the human mind sees its own faith, by which it believes what it does not see, it does not see something everlasting. For this will not always be; it certainly will not be when, this pilgrimage ended, in which we are away from the Lord so that we must walk by faith, that sight succeeds through which we shall see face to face; just as now, though not seeing, yet because we believe, we shall deserve to see, and shall rejoice that we have been led through faith to sight. For then there will no longer be faith, by which things not seen are believed, but sight, by which the things that were believed are seen. Then, therefore, even if we remember this mortal life that has passed, and recall by memory that we once believed what we did not see, this faith will be reckoned among things past and gone, not among things present and always remaining; and so this trinity too, which now consists in the memory, contemplation, and love of this same faith, present and remaining, will then be found to be passed and gone, not lasting. From this it is gathered that, if this trinity is already the image of God, then that too would have to be reckoned not among things that always are but among things that pass.

But God forbid that, since the nature of the soul is immortal and, from the beginning in which it was created, never afterward ceases to be, that than which it has nothing better should not last with its immortality. And what better thing has been created in its nature than that it was made in the image of its Creator? Not, then, in the retaining, contemplating, and loving of faith, which will not always be, but in that which will always be, is to be found what ought to be called the image of God. Or shall we examine somewhat more carefully and more deeply whether this is so? For it can be said that this trinity does not perish even when faith itself has passed; because, as we now both hold it in memory, and see it in thought, and love it with the will, so then too, when we shall hold in memory that we had it, and recall it, and join both of these by the will as the third, the same trinity will remain. For if it left in us no trace, as it were, in passing, we would certainly not have anything of it in our memory to which we might run back in recalling it as past, joining the two by the attention as the third, namely what was in the memory while we were not thinking of it, and what is formed from it by thought. But whoever says this does not distinguish that the trinity is one thing now, when we hold, see, and love present faith in ourselves, and will be another then, when we shall behold by recollection not faith itself but, as it were, its imaginary trace stored in memory, and shall join these two, that is, what was in the memory of the one retaining and what is impressed from it on the gaze of the one recollecting, by the will as the third. That this may be understood, let us take an example from bodily things, of which we spoke enough in the eleventh book. Ascending from lower to higher things, or entering from outer to inner, we found the first trinity in the body that is seen, and in the gaze of the one seeing, which is formed from it when it sees, and in the attention of the will, which joins the two. Let us set up a trinity like this one, when the faith which is now in us is placed in our memory as that body in its place, and from it the thought of the one recollecting is informed, as the gaze of the one looking is from that body; and to these two, to complete the trinity, is added the will as the third, which connects and joins the faith placed in memory and a certain likeness of it impressed on the gaze of recollection; just as in that trinity of bodily vision the attention of the will joins the form of the body that is seen and the conformation that comes about in the sight of the one seeing. Let us suppose, then, that that body which was seen has perished, crumbled away, and that nothing of it has remained in any place, to which the sight might run back to see it: because the image of a bodily thing now passed and gone remains in memory, from which the gaze of the one recollecting may be informed, and these two are joined by the will as the third, is it to be called the same trinity that there was when the appearance of the body placed in its place was being seen? Certainly not, but altogether another: for besides the fact that the former was outside and this inside, the former was produced by the appearance of a present body, this by the image of a past one. So too in this matter which we are now treating, and for which we thought that example should be used, the faith which is now in our mind, like that body in its place, while it is held, looked at, and loved, produces a certain trinity; but that trinity will not exist when this faith is no longer in the mind, as that body is no longer in its place. And the trinity that will exist then, when we shall remember that faith was in us, not that it is, will certainly be another. For this one, which exists now, the thing itself produces, present and fixed in the mind of the believer; but that one which will exist then, the imagination of a past thing left behind in the memory of the one recollecting will produce.

Neither, then, will that trinity which does not yet exist be the image of God, nor is this one the image of God which will not then exist; but the image of the Creator is to be found in the soul of man, that is, the rational or intellectual soul, which has been implanted immortally in its immortality. For just as the immortality of the soul itself is spoken of in a certain sense (for the soul too has its death, when it lacks the happy life, which is to be called the true life of the soul; but it is called immortal because it never ceases to live with some kind of life, even when it is most wretched), so, although reason or understanding in it appears now asleep, now small, now great, the human soul is never anything but rational and intellectual; and so, if it was made in the image of God in this respect, that it can use reason and understanding to understand and behold God, then certainly from the beginning in which this so great and wonderful nature began to be, whether this image is so worn out as to be almost nothing, or obscured and deformed, or clear and beautiful, it always exists. Finally, divine Scripture, pitying the deformity of its dignity, says, “Although man walks in the image, yet he is disturbed in vain; he heaps up treasure and does not know for whom he will gather it.” It would not attribute vanity to the image of God unless it saw that it had been deformed. And it shows well enough that that deformity is not so strong as to take away its being an image, by saying, “Although man walks in the image.” Therefore this saying can truly be pronounced from both sides, so that, as it was said, “Although man walks in the image, yet he is disturbed in vain,” so it may be said, “Although man is disturbed in vain, yet he walks in the image.” For although it is a great nature, yet it could be vitiated, because it is not the highest; and although it could be vitiated because it is not the highest, yet because it is capable of the highest nature and can be a partaker of it, it is a great nature. Let us seek, then, in this image of God a certain trinity of its own kind, with the help of him who made us in his own image. For we cannot otherwise investigate these things healthfully and find anything according to the wisdom which is from him. But if the things we have said in the earlier books, and above all in the tenth, about the human soul or mind are either held and recalled by the reader's memory, or reviewed with care in the places where they were written, he will not want a longer discourse here on the inquiry into so great a matter. Among other things, then, we said in the tenth book that the mind of man knows itself. For the mind knows nothing so well as what is present to it; and nothing is more present to the mind than it is to itself. And we used other proofs too, as far as seemed enough, by which this was most certainly proved.

What, then, is to be said of the mind of an infant, still so small and sunk in so great an ignorance of things that the mind of a man who knows something shudders at the darkness of that mind? Or must it too be believed to know itself, but, too intent on the things which it has begun to perceive through the bodily senses with a delight the greater the newer it is, it cannot be ignorant of itself but cannot think of itself? How intently it is carried toward these sensible things that are outside can be inferred even from this alone, that it is so greedy to drink in this light that if someone less careful, or not knowing what can result, has set a night lamp where an infant lies, in that direction to which the eyes of the one lying there can be turned while the neck cannot be bent, its gaze is not taken away from it, so much so that we know some have even become squint-eyed from this, the eyes keeping the shape which habit in some way fixed in them while they were tender and soft. So too toward the other senses of the body the souls of little ones, as far as that age permits, as it were narrow themselves by attention, so that whatever offends or attracts through the flesh, this alone they vehemently shrink from or desire; but they do not think of their own inner things, nor can they be reminded to do so; because they do not yet know the signs of one reminding them, among which words hold the chief place, and of these, as of other things, they know nothing at all. But that it is one thing not to know oneself and another not to think of oneself we have already shown in the same volume. But let us leave this age, which cannot be questioned about what goes on in it, and which we ourselves have greatly forgotten. Let it suffice to be certain of this alone: that when a man has been able to think about the nature of his own mind and to find what is true, he will find it nowhere else than in himself. And he will find, not what he did not know, but what he was not thinking of. For what do we know, if we do not know what is in our own mind, since all that we know we can know only by the mind?

Yet so great is the power of thought that not even the mind itself in a way places itself in its own sight except when it thinks of itself; and so nothing is in the mind's sight except what is being thought of, so much so that not even the mind itself, by which whatever is thought of is thought of, can be in its own sight otherwise than by thinking of itself. But how, when it is not thinking of itself, it is not in its own sight, since it can never be without itself, as though it itself were one thing and its sight another, I cannot find. This, indeed, is said not absurdly of the eye of the body: for the eye itself is fixed in its place in the body, but its gaze is stretched out to the things that are outside, and extends as far as the stars. Nor is the eye in its own sight, since it does not see itself except when a mirror is set before it, of which we have already spoken; which certainly does not happen when the mind sets itself in its own sight by thinking of itself. Does it, then, see one part of itself by another part when it beholds itself in thinking, as with some of our members, which are the eyes, we see other members of ours which can be in our sight? What more absurd thing can be said or thought? From where, then, is the mind removed, except from itself? And where is it placed in its own sight, except before itself? It will not, then, be where it was when it was not in its own sight, because, placed here, it has been removed from there. But if it has moved in order to be beheld, where will it stay in order to behold? Or is it as it were doubled, so as to be both there and here, that is, both where it can behold and where it can be beheld, so that in itself it is beholding and before itself it is beheld? Truth, consulted, answers us none of these things; because when we think in this way, we think only of feigned images of bodies, which the mind is not, as is most certain to the few minds by which truth can be consulted about this matter. It remains, then, that its sight is something belonging to its nature, and that it is called back to it when it thinks of itself, not as through a space of place but by an incorporeal turning; but when it does not think of itself, it is not indeed in its own sight, nor is its gaze formed from itself, yet it knows itself, as though it were itself the memory of itself. So it is with one skilled in many disciplines: the things he knows are contained in his memory, and nothing of them is in the sight of his mind except what he is thinking of; the rest are stored in a kind of secret knowledge, which is called memory. Therefore we commended the trinity in this way: we placed in the memory that from which the gaze of the one thinking is formed; the conformation itself as the image which is impressed from it; and that by which the two are joined, love or will. The mind, then, when it beholds itself by thought, understands itself and recognizes itself; it begets, then, this understanding and knowledge of itself. For an incorporeal thing is beheld by being understood, and is known by understanding. Nor indeed does the mind beget this knowledge of itself, when by thinking it beholds itself as understood, as though it had been unknown to itself before; but it was known to itself in the way that things are known which are contained in the memory, even if they are not thought of; for we say that a man knows letters even when he is thinking of other things and not of letters. And these two, begetter and begotten, are joined by love as the third, which is nothing else than the will seeking or holding something to be enjoyed. And so we thought the trinity of the mind should be conveyed also by these three names: memory, understanding, will. But since we said near the end of the same tenth book that the mind always remembers itself, and always understands and loves itself, although it does not always think of itself as distinct from the things that are not what it is, we must ask how understanding belongs to thought, while the knowledge of anything that is in the mind, even when it is not being thought of, is said to belong to memory alone. For if this is so, it did not have these three, so as to remember itself, and understand itself, and love itself; but it only remembered itself, and afterward, when it began to think of itself, then it understood and loved itself.

Let us therefore consider more carefully the example we used, where it was shown that not knowing a thing is one thing and not thinking of it another, and that it can happen that a man knows something which he is not thinking of, when he is thinking of something else and not of it. One skilled in two or more disciplines, then, when he thinks of one, nevertheless knows the other or others even if he is not thinking of them. But can we rightly say, “This musician knows music indeed, but does not understand it now, because he is not thinking of it; but he understands geometry now, for he is thinking of it now”? This statement, as far as appears, is absurd. And what of this, if we say, “This musician knows music indeed, but does not love it now, since he is not thinking of it; but he loves geometry now, since he is now thinking of it”: is it not likewise absurd? But we say most rightly, “This man whom you see discussing geometry is also an accomplished musician; for he both remembers that discipline and understands it and loves it; but although he knows and loves it, he is not thinking of it now, since he is thinking of the geometry which he is discussing.” From this we are reminded that there are in the hidden part of the mind certain knowledges of certain things, and that they come forth in a way into the open, and are set, as it were, more openly in the sight of the mind, when they are thought of; for then the mind finds that it both remembers and understands and loves itself, even with regard to what it was not thinking of when it was thinking of something else. But as for what we have not thought of for a long time, and cannot think of unless reminded, that, in some strange way, if it can be said, we do not know that we know. Finally, the one who reminds rightly says to the one he reminds: “You know this, but you do not know that you know it; I will remind you, and you will find yourself knowing what you thought you did not know.” Writings too do this, which have been written about those things which the reader, under the guidance of reason, finds to be true: not things which he believes to be true on the word of the one who wrote, as history is read, but things which he himself also finds to be true, whether within himself or in the very light of the mind, the truth. But one who even when reminded cannot behold these things is sunk deep in the darkness of ignorance by a great blindness of heart, and needs a more wonderful divine help to be able to arrive at true wisdom. For this reason, then, I wanted to use some kind of illustration concerning thought, by which it could be shown how, from the things contained in the memory, the gaze of one recollecting is informed, and something is begotten where a man thinks, such as was in that where he remembered before thinking; because what comes about in time, and where the parent precedes the offspring by a space of time, is more easily distinguished. For if we refer ourselves to the inner memory of the mind, by which it remembers itself, and the inner understanding by which it understands itself, and the inner will by which it loves itself, where these three are always together, and have always been together from the time they began to be, whether they were thought of or not, the image of that Trinity will indeed seem to belong to memory alone; but because there a word cannot exist without thought (for we think all that we say, even with that inner word which belongs to the language of no nation), this image is rather recognized in those three, namely memory, understanding, and will. And by understanding I now mean that by which we understand when thinking, that is, when our thought is formed by finding those things which were at hand in the memory but were not being thought of; and by will, or love, or affection, that which joins this offspring and parent and is in a way common to both. Hence it came about that I led the slowness of readers even through outward sensible things which are seen by the eyes of the flesh, namely in the eleventh book; and from there, entering with them into that power of the inner man by which it reasons about temporal things, I deferred that principal, ruling power by which it contemplates eternal things; and this I did in two volumes: in the twelfth distinguishing the two, of which one is higher and the other lower, which ought to be subject to the higher; and in the thirteenth discussing, with as much truth and brevity as I could, the function of the lower, in which the wholesome knowledge of human things is contained, so that in this temporal life we may do what leads us to attain the eternal; since I enclosed in one volume, concisely, a matter so manifold and abundant, celebrated in many and great discussions by many great men, showing a trinity in it too, but not yet one to be called the image of God.