Current Seminar:
• Augustine's De Trinitate
3/24/2007
Book XII, Chapters 3-4
Br. Dunstan Robidoux, OSB
In chapter 3 of Book 12, Augustine offers an exegesis of St. Paul when he speaks of man as made in God’s image and about the fact that a man is to
uncover his head when entering a holy place while a woman is to cover her head. And so, the question arises about what this all means. Is
a woman made in God’s image? But, to this question, Augustine responds with an affirmative no since the image of God which exists in human beings
is an image that is reflected in human rational nature. No man and no woman is an image in God in terms of the sexuality of one or the
other. The sexual differences which Augustine refers to are used as analogies for speaking about a common inner tension which exists in all human
beings. Each of us has a mind and when our minds are devoted to the care and contemplation of uncreated realities, they are most at peace and
closest to God. But, when our minds are distracted by considerations which pertain to created things, to the things of this world, they will not
be at peace and they will be alienated from God. One cannot argue that the mind of a woman is such that it cannot serve as an image of God since,
to the degree that a woman’s mind is most fully itself in act, it too as an intellectual power reflects something of the being and nature of
God. Every intellect, to the degree that it is fully in act, is an intellect which best leads one to a knowledge and love of God. While the
origin of sin in the story of Adam and Eve can be used as a symbolic heuristic that allows us to distinguish between two kinds of sin: an inner,
psychological sin (symbolized by the eating of Eve) which exists within one’s private consciousness and a completion which occurs through an
externalization in outer sin (symbolized by the eating of Adam which occurs under Eve’s influence), it has to be admitted that this differentiation
exists within every human soul, whether male or female. Outer sin is always worse than inner sin even if sin begins always as an internal event
that can lead to worse consequences. With the acknowledgment of inner sin as an event in human life, one benefit is the focus given to the value
and care of one’s inner life and conditions.
In chapter 4, Augustine distinguishes between wisdom and knowledge. While knowledge refers to a knowledge of created things, wisdom refers to a
knowledge of uncreated things. It refers to God. And, because wisdom refers to a knowledge of uncreated reality, it refers to a form of
knowing which transcends the value of any form of knowing that seeks to come to an understanding and knowledge of created things. This same
distinction can be found in both Aristotle and Aquinas since, in the thought of both of these men, wisdom is spoken of as a knowledge of first
causes. It is a higher knowing which, if participated in by human beings, serves as an ordering principle for any kind of knowing which can occur
in one’s efforts to understand lesser things. Augustine does not speak here of first principles, first principles of the human intellect. He
does not use this expression although he would seem to suggest this kind of notion when he speaks about an order of nature in human knowing that can be
invoked to explain how it is possible for human beings to participate in the higher knowing which refers to wisdom. Plato’s notion of a pre-existent
life is rejected as lacking. It is a myth. The evidence that has been offered in its favor is insufficient. However, for our knowledge
of first principles, one can speak of a "non-bodily" light that immediately reveals a certain set of truths which always hold. Admittedly,
Augustine does not identify any of these truths but, in some way, they can be said to exist to the extent that any of us begins to experience an order of
reality which transcends our common experiences of the created order of things within which we live and exist as temporal beings. By turning
inwardly and by directing our attention to our internal intellectual experience, we have a better basis for finding a more apt analogy for speaking
about God as triune.
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