On the Trinity 9.1–9.10

We are certainly seeking a trinity, not any trinity whatever, but that Trinity which is God, the true, supreme, and only God. Wait, then, whoever you are who hear these things; for we are still seeking, and no one justly blames one who seeks such things, provided that, most firm in faith, he seeks what is most difficult either to know or to express. But one who affirms is quickly and justly blamed by whoever either sees or teaches better. “Seek God,” he says, “and your soul shall live.” And lest anyone rashly rejoice as though he had grasped him: “Seek his face always,” he says. And the apostle: “If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by him.” Even so he did not say, “has known him,” which is a dangerous presumption, but “is known by him.” So too elsewhere, when he had said, “But now knowing God,” at once correcting himself he said, “or rather being known by God”; and above all in that place, “Brethren,” he says, “I do not consider that I have grasped it; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind, and stretching out to what lies ahead, I press on with intent towards the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let as many as are perfect be of this mind.” He says that perfection in this life is nothing other than forgetting what lies behind and stretching out with intent to what lies ahead. For the intent of the seeker is safest until that is grasped to which we tend and towards which we stretch. But that intent is right which sets out from faith. For sure faith in some way begins knowledge; but sure knowledge will not be perfected except after this life, when we shall see “face to face.” Let us be of this mind, then, so as to know that the disposition to seek the truth is safer than that of presuming the unknown to be known. Let us therefore seek as those who will find, and find as those who will go on seeking. For “when a man has finished, then he begins.” Concerning what is to be believed, let us not doubt with any unbelief; concerning what is to be understood, let us not affirm with any rashness: in the former, authority is to be held; in the latter, truth is to be searched out. As regards this question, then, let us believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God, the maker and ruler of the whole creation; that the Father is not the Son, nor the Holy Spirit either the Father or the Son; but a trinity of persons related to one another, and a unity of equal essence. And let us seek to understand this, praying for help from him whom we wish to understand, and desiring, as far as he grants, to explain what we understand with such care and anxiety of piety that, even if we say one thing for another, we may still say nothing unworthy. So that if, for example, we say something of the Father that does not properly fit the Father, it may fit the Son, or the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity itself; and if something of the Son that does not properly suit the Son, it may at least suit the Father, or the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity; likewise if something of the Holy Spirit that does not befit what is proper to the Holy Spirit, it may yet not be foreign to the Father or the Son, or to the one God, the Trinity itself. As now we desire to see whether that most excellent love is properly the Holy Spirit; and if it is not, then either the Father is love, or the Son, or the Trinity itself; since we cannot resist the most certain faith and the most powerful authority of Scripture, which says, “God is love.” Yet we must not stray into sacrilegious error, so as to say anything of the Trinity that fits not the Creator but rather the creature, or is invented by empty thought.

Since this is so, let us attend to these three things which we seem to have found. We are not yet speaking of things above, not yet of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but of this unequal image, yet an image, that is, man; for the weakness of our mind perhaps gazes on it more familiarly and more easily. See, when I who seek this love something, there are three: I, and what I love, and love itself. For I do not love love unless I love it loving; for there is no love where nothing is loved. There are three, then: the lover, what is loved, and love. What if I love nothing but myself? Will there not be two: what I love, and love? For the lover and what is loved are the same when one loves oneself; just as to love and to be loved are in the same way the same, when anyone loves himself. For the same thing is said twice when it is said, “He loves himself, and is loved by himself.” For then to love and to be loved are not one thing and another, just as the lover and the beloved are not one and another. But love and what is loved are two even so. For when anyone loves himself there is no love unless love itself is loved. And it is one thing to love oneself, another to love one's love. For love is not loved unless it is already loving something; because where nothing is loved there is no love. There are two, then, when anyone loves himself: love, and what is loved. For then the lover and what is loved are one. Hence it seems not to follow that wherever there is love, three things are thereby understood. Let us set aside from this consideration the other things, which are many, of which man consists; and in order that we may find clearly, as far as we can in these matters, what we are now seeking, let us treat of the mind alone. The mind, then, when it loves itself, shows two things, the mind and love. And what is it to love oneself but to wish to be present to oneself in order to enjoy oneself? And when it wishes itself to be as much as it is, the will is equal to the mind, and the love equal to the lover. And if love is some substance, it is certainly not a body but spirit; nor is the mind a body, but spirit. Yet love and mind are not two spirits but one spirit, not two essences but one; and yet two things are one, the lover and love, or, if you like, what is loved and love. And these two are said relatively to each other. For the lover is referred to love, and love to the lover. For the lover loves with some love, and love belongs to some lover. But mind and spirit are not said relatively but show essence. For it is not because they are the mind and spirit of some man that they are mind and spirit. For take away what man is, which is so called with the body joined to it; take away the body, then, and mind and spirit remain; but take away the lover, and there is no love; and take away love, and there is no lover. And therefore in so far as they are referred to each other they are two; but in what they are said with reference to themselves, each is spirit, and both together one spirit; each is mind, and both together one mind. Where, then, is the trinity? Let us attend as far as we can, and call upon the everlasting light to enlighten our darkness, and let us see in ourselves, as far as we are permitted, the image of God.

For the mind cannot love itself unless it also knows itself; for how does it love what it does not know? Or if anyone says that the mind, from general or specific knowledge, believes itself to be such as it has found others to be, and therefore loves itself, he speaks most foolishly. For how does the mind know any mind, if it does not know itself? For it is not as the eye of the body sees other eyes and does not see itself, that the mind knows other minds and is ignorant of itself. For through the eyes of the body we see bodies, because we cannot break back and turn upon the eyes themselves the rays that shine out through them and touch whatever we see, except when we look into mirrors. This is discussed most subtly and most obscurely, until it is shown most plainly whether the matter is so or not. But however it may be with the power by which we see through the eyes, that power itself, whether it is rays or something else, we certainly cannot see with the eyes; but we seek it with the mind, and if it can be done, we grasp this too with the mind. The mind itself, then, as it gathers knowledge of bodily things through the senses of the body, so it gathers knowledge of incorporeal things through itself. Therefore it also knows itself through itself, since it is incorporeal. For if it does not know itself, it does not love itself.

And just as there are two things, the mind and its love, when it loves itself, so there are two things, the mind and its knowledge, when it knows itself. The mind itself, then, and its love and its knowledge are three things, and these three are one; and when they are perfect, they are equal. For if it loves itself less than it is (for example, if the mind of a man loves itself only as much as a man's body is to be loved, though it is more than the body), it sins, and its love is not perfect. Likewise, if it loves itself more than it is, as if it loved itself as much as God is to be loved, though it is incomparably less than God, it also sins greatly and does not have a perfect love of itself. But it sins with greater perversity and wickedness when it loves the body as much as God is to be loved. Likewise, knowledge, if it is less than what is known and can be fully known, is not perfect. But if it is greater, then the nature that knows is higher than the one that is known; as the knowledge of a body is greater than the body itself which is known by that knowledge. For that knowledge is a kind of life in the reason of the knower, while the body is not life. And any life is greater than any body, not in bulk but in power. But when the mind knows itself, its knowledge does not surpass it, because it itself knows and it itself is known. When, therefore, it knows itself whole, and nothing else with itself, its knowledge is equal to it; because its knowledge is not from another nature when it knows itself. And when it perceives itself whole and nothing more, it is neither less nor greater. We were right, then, to say that these three, when they are perfect, are consequently equal. At the same time we are reminded, if we can see it in any way, that these things exist in the soul and are, as it were, unfolded from being folded up, so that they may be perceived and counted substantially, or, so to speak, essentially, not as in a subject, as colour or shape in a body, or any other quality or quantity. For whatever is of this kind does not go beyond the subject in which it is. For this colour or shape of this body cannot also be that of another body. But the mind, by the love with which it loves itself, can also love something else besides itself. Likewise the mind knows not only itself but many other things. Therefore love and knowledge are not in the mind as in a subject; but these too exist substantially, as the mind itself does; because even if they are said relatively to one another, each is nevertheless in its own substance. Nor are they said relatively to each other as colour and the coloured thing are, so that colour is in the coloured subject, not having its own substance in itself (since the coloured body is a substance, while colour is in a substance); but as two friends are also two men, which are substances, while they are called men not relatively, but friends relatively. But again, although the lover or the knower is a substance, and knowledge is a substance, and love is a substance, while the lover and love, or the knower and knowledge, are said relatively to each other like friends, and mind or spirit are not relative, as men are not relative either: yet the lover and love, or the knower and knowledge, cannot be apart from each other as men who are friends can. Although friends too seem to be separable in body, not in mind, in so far as they are friends; yet it can happen that a friend begins even to hate his friend, and by that very fact ceases to be a friend, without the other knowing it and while he still loves him. But if the love with which the mind loves itself ceases to be, the mind will at the same time cease to be loving. Likewise, if the knowledge by which the mind knows itself ceases to be, the mind will at the same time cease to know itself. As a head is certainly the head of something headed, and they are said relatively to each other, though they are also substances; for both the head is a body and the headed thing is; and if there is no head, there will be no headed thing either. But these can be separated from each other by cutting off; those cannot. And even if there are some bodies that cannot be cut or divided at all, yet unless they consisted of their parts, they would not be bodies. A part, then, is said relatively to the whole, because every part is a part of some whole, and the whole is whole by all its parts. But since both the part and the whole are body, these are not only said relatively but also exist substantially. Perhaps, then, the mind is a whole, and its parts, as it were, are the love by which it loves itself and the knowledge by which it knows itself, two parts of which that whole consists? Or are there three equal parts by which the one whole is completed? But no part embraces the whole of which it is a part; whereas the mind, when it knows itself whole, that is, knows itself perfectly, its knowledge extends through the whole of it; and when it loves itself perfectly, it loves itself whole, and its love extends through the whole of it. Is it, then, as one drink is made from wine, water, and honey, and each extends through the whole, and yet they are three (for there is no part of the drink that does not have these three; for they are not joined, as if they were water and oil, but wholly mixed; and they are all substances, and that whole liquid is one substance made from three): is it something like this that we are to think these three are together, mind, love, and knowledge? But water, wine, and honey are not of one substance, although from their mixture one substance of drink is made. But how those three are not of the same substance I do not see, since the mind itself loves itself and itself knows itself; and these three are such that the mind is neither loved nor known by any other thing. These three, then, must be of one and the same essence; and therefore, if they were confused as by a mixture, they would in no way be three, nor could they be referred to one another. As if you make three similar rings from one and the same gold, although linked to one another, they are referred to one another in that they are similar (for every like thing is like something), and there is a trinity of rings and one gold; but if they are mixed with one another and each is spread through the whole mass, that trinity will perish and will not exist at all; and not only will it be called one gold, as it was called in those three rings, but there will no longer be any three golden things.

But in those three, when the mind knows itself and loves itself, the trinity remains, mind, love, and knowledge; and it is not confused by any mixture, although each is in itself and they are mutually whole in wholes, whether each in two or two in each. So all are in all. For the mind is certainly in itself, since it is called mind with reference to itself, although as knowing, or known, or knowable it is said relatively to its knowledge; and as loving and loved or lovable it is referred to the love by which it loves itself. And knowledge, although it is referred to the mind that knows or is known, is yet also said with reference to itself to be known and knowing; for the knowledge by which the mind knows itself is not unknown to itself. And love, although it is referred to the loving mind whose love it is, is yet also love with reference to itself, so that it is also in itself; because love too is loved, and it cannot be loved by anything but love, that is, by itself. So each of these is in itself. And they are in one another in this way: the loving mind is in love, and love in the knowledge of the lover, and knowledge in the knowing mind. Each is in two in this way: the mind that knows and loves itself is in its love and knowledge; and the love of the mind that loves and knows itself is in the mind and its knowledge; and the knowledge of the mind that knows and loves itself is in the mind and in its love, because it loves itself knowing and knows itself loving. And so also two are in each, because the mind that knows and loves itself is with its knowledge in love, and with its love in knowledge; and love itself and knowledge are together in the mind that loves and knows itself. And how they are whole in wholes we have already shown above, when the mind loves itself whole and knows itself whole, and knows its whole love and loves its whole knowledge, when these three are perfect with reference to themselves. In a wonderful way, then, these three are inseparable from one another, and yet each of them is a substance, and all together are one substance or essence, while they are said relatively to one another.

But when the human mind knows itself and loves itself, it does not know and love something unchangeable. And each man, in speaking, expresses his own mind in one way, attending to what is going on in himself; but he defines the human mind in another way, by specific or general knowledge. And so, when he speaks to me of his own mind, whether he understands this or that or does not understand, and whether he wills or does not will this or that, I believe him; but when he says what is true of the human mind specifically or generally, I recognize and approve it. Hence it is clear that each sees one thing in himself, which another believes when he tells him, yet does not see; and another thing in the truth itself, which another too can behold; and the former changes with time, while the latter stands in unchangeable eternity. For we do not gather a general or specific knowledge of the human mind by likeness, by seeing many minds with the eyes of the body; but we behold the inviolable truth, from which we may define perfectly, as far as we can, not what kind each man's mind is, but what kind it ought to be by the everlasting reasons. Hence too the images (phantasiae) of bodily things drawn in through the sense of the body and in some way poured into the memory, from which even things not seen are thought of by an invented image (phantasma), whether otherwise than they are or by chance as they are, we find ourselves approving or disapproving within ourselves by wholly other rules that remain unchangeably above our mind, when we rightly approve or disapprove of anything. For when I recall the walls of Carthage which I have seen, and when I picture those of Alexandria which I have not seen, and, preferring some of these imaginary forms to others, I prefer them reasonably, the judgement of truth from above is strong and clear, and is firm by the most incorrupt rules of its own right; and even if it is overlaid, as it were, by a kind of cloud of bodily images, it is not wrapped up and confused by them. But it makes a difference whether I am shut off from the clear sky beneath this or that fog, or, as usually happens on the highest mountains, enjoying the free air between the two, I look upon both the most serene light above and the densest mists below. For whence is the ardour of brotherly love kindled in me when I hear that some man has endured bitter torments for the beauty and firmness of faith? And if the man himself is pointed out to me with the finger, I am eager to join him to myself, to make him known to me, to bind him in friendship. And so, if opportunity is given, I approach, I address him, I converse with him, I express my affection for him in what words I can, and I wish that he in turn should have and express towards me the same affection; and I strive after a spiritual embrace by believing, because I cannot so quickly search out and see thoroughly his inner self. I love, then, the faithful and brave man with a chaste and genuine love. But if in our conversations he confesses to me, or incautiously in some way betrays himself, that he believes unfitting things about God, and desires something carnal even in him, and that he endured those things for such an error, or from desire of hoped-for money, or from empty greed for human praise, at once that love with which I was carried towards him, offended and, as it were, struck back and taken away from an unworthy man, remains in that form from which I had loved him, believing him to be such. Unless perhaps I now love him in order that he may be such, when I have found that he is not such. But in that man nothing has changed; yet he can be changed, so as to become what I had believed him already to be. In my mind, however, my estimate itself has certainly changed, which was one way about him and is now another; and the same love, at the command of unchangeable justice from above, has been turned from the intention of enjoying to the intention of caring for him. But the form itself of unshaken and stable truth, in which I would have enjoyed the man, believing him good, and in which I take care that he may be good, floods with the same light of incorruptible and most pure reason, in imperturbable eternity, both the gaze of my mind and that cloud of imagination which I discern from above when I think of the same man whom I had seen. Likewise, when I turn over in my mind an arch, beautifully and evenly curved, which I saw, for example, at Carthage, a certain thing reported to the mind through the eyes and passed into the memory produces an imaginary view. But I behold something else in my mind, according to which that work pleases me; and from which, if it displeased me, I would also correct it. And so we judge of these things according to that form, and we discern that form by the intuition of the rational mind. But these things we either touch by the sense of the body when present, or recall as images of absent things fixed in the memory, or from their likeness we picture such things as we ourselves, if we wished and were able, would also attempt to make in actual work: picturing in the mind the images of bodies, or seeing bodies through the body, in one way; but in another way grasping by simple understanding, above the eye of the mind, the reasons and the unspeakably beautiful art of such figures.

In that eternal truth, then, from which all temporal things were made, we behold with the sight of the mind the form according to which we are, and according to which we do anything by true and right reason, whether in ourselves or in bodies; and from it we have with us, as a word, the true knowledge of things conceived, and we beget it by speaking inwardly; nor does it depart from us by being born. But when we speak to others, we apply to the word that remains within the service of the voice, or of some bodily sign, so that by a kind of sensible reminder something similar may come about in the mind of the hearer, such as does not depart from the mind of the speaker. And so we do nothing through the members of the body in our deeds and words, by which the conduct of men is approved or disapproved, that we have not preceded by a word uttered within ourselves. For no one does anything willingly that he has not first spoken in his heart. And this word is conceived by love, either of the creature or of the Creator, that is, either of changeable nature or of unchangeable truth.

So it is conceived either by desire or by love: not that the creature is not to be loved, but if that love is referred to the Creator, it will no longer be desire but love. For it is desire when the creature is loved for its own sake. Then it does not help the one who uses it, but corrupts the one who enjoys it. Since, then, the creature is either equal to us or inferior, the inferior is to be used for God, and the equal enjoyed, but in God. For just as you ought to enjoy yourself, not in yourself but in him who made you, so too him whom you love as yourself. Let us, then, enjoy both ourselves and our brethren in the Lord, and from there let us not dare to send ourselves back to ourselves, and as it were let ourselves slide downward. And the word is born when, having been thought out, it pleases, either for sinning or for doing right. Love, then, as a kind of middle term, joins our word and the mind from which it is begotten, and binds itself with them as a third, in an incorporeal embrace, without any confusion.

But the word conceived and the word born are the same when the will rests in the knowledge itself, which happens in the love of spiritual things. For one who, for example, knows justice perfectly and loves it perfectly is already just, even if there is no need to act according to it outwardly through the members of the body. But in the love of carnal and temporal things, as in the offspring of animals themselves, the conception of the word is one thing and its birth another. For there what is conceived by desiring is born by obtaining. For it is not enough for avarice to know and love gold unless it also has it; nor to know and love eating or lying with someone unless one also does it; nor to know and love honours and power unless they come. And yet all these things, even when obtained, are not enough. “For whoever drinks of this water,” he says, “will thirst again.” And therefore in the Psalm too: “He conceived sorrow,” it says, “and brought forth iniquity.” He says that sorrow or labour is conceived when those things are conceived which it is not enough to know and to will, and the mind burns and is sick with want until it reaches them and as it were brings them forth. Hence in the Latin language things are elegantly called parta (gotten), and reperta and comperta (found), words which sound as though derived from partus (birth). For “desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin.” Hence the Lord cries out, “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened”; and in another place, “Woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing in those days.” And since he referred all things, whether right deeds or sins, to the birth of the word, he says, “By your mouth you will be justified, and by your mouth you will be condemned,” wishing the mouth to be understood not as this visible one, but as the inner, invisible mouth of thought and of the heart.

It is rightly asked, then, whether all knowledge is a word, or only knowledge that is loved. For we know also the things we hate; but the things that displease us should not be said to be conceived or brought forth by the mind. For not all things that touch it in any way are conceived; but some only so as to be known, yet not called words, like those of which we are now treating. For words that occupy spaces of time with syllables, whether they are pronounced or thought, are called words in one sense; in another sense everything that is known is called a word impressed on the mind, as long as it can be brought out of memory and defined, even though the thing itself displeases; in yet another sense, when what is conceived by the mind pleases. According to this last kind of word is to be taken what the apostle says, “No one says, Lord Jesus, except in the Holy Spirit”; while according to another sense of word those also say this of whom the Lord himself says, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Yet when even the things we hate rightly displease us and are rightly disapproved, our disapproval of them is approved, and pleases, and is a word. Nor does the knowledge of vices displease us, but the vices themselves. For it pleases me that I know and define what intemperance is; and this is its word. Just as in an art faults are known, and the knowledge of them is rightly approved, when the expert distinguishes the form and the privation of excellence, as affirming and denying, being and not being; and yet to be deprived of virtue and to fall into vice is damnable. And to define intemperance and say its word belongs to the art of morals; but to be intemperate belongs to what that art blames. As to know and define what a solecism is belongs to the art of speaking; but to commit one is a fault which the same art reproves. The word, then, which we now wish to distinguish and explain, is knowledge with love. When, therefore, the mind knows and loves itself, its word is joined to it by love. And since it loves its knowledge and knows its love, the word is in love and love in the word, and both in the one who loves and speaks.