Current Seminar:
• Augustine's De Trinitate
6/3/2006
Book II, Prologue & Chapters 1-2
Br. Dunstan Robidoux, OSB
After speaking about how difficult it is to ask questions about the Trinity and find appropriate answers, and after noting that not all passages in
scripture which refer to Christ and God the Father can be adequately handled by applying a hermeneutical principle which speaks of the Son having two
natures (the form of God and the form of a servant), Augustine introduces a second hermeneutical principle which can be used to interpret doubtful
passages that cannot be so easily understood by applying the first principle that he had taken from St. Paul in Philippians where Christ incarnate is
spoken of as having a divine form and a human form (cited as the "form of a servant"). This second principle says that the Son comes from the
Father but in a co-eternal way. A relation binds the two where the Son comes from the Father who perhaps can be described as "unoriginate."
The Father does not come from the Son nor does he come from something else. The Son comes from the Father, however, in a way which does not
suggest any degree of subordination since the activity of one is the activity of the other and vice versa. [4.] A
perfect equality obtains between the activity of one and the activity of the other but, even more strongly, it is said that the activity is indivisible
or inseparable. [5.] The Son's teaching is also the Father's teaching. While it might be said that the Son
is doing something, since Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share the same nature, they all share in the same activity. While it might be more
appropriate that one do something and another do something else, each divine person can still be said to be doing what the other is doing (even as
one notes that each person, as person, differs from the other). The activities of the Holy Spirit are to be understood as the Son's activities are
understood. The Holy Spirit, like the Son, is not less than the Father and so the language which suggests subordinationism is to be interpreted
in terms of a proceeding or coming from the Father which is as eternal as is the procession of the Son from the Father. The Spirit's teaching is
also the Father's teaching. It is one and the same act which is to be identified with one and the same divine nature. By scriptural
exegesis, Augustine notes that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit glorify each other and so this mutual glorification argues against any subordinationism in
the relations between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is fully divine.
In chapter 2, Augustine continues to argue that the activities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not to be distinguished from each other in
any essential way. As his scriptural exegesis indicates, the sending of Christ incarnate should not be understood as only a sending of Christ
by the Father since, in this sending, the Son also sends himself into the created order (an order which already contains him) and, so too, the Holy
Spirit. Both Son and Spirit enter a world where they already live and exist although the visible signs used by the Holy Spirit are to be
distinguished from Christ's assumption of a human nature which is to hold for all time. The Holy Spirit cannot be identified with any
varying physical manifestation although it is not wrong to conclude that Christ is indeed a man though he is more than simply a man. What
distinguishes Christ's entry into the world is that it is done by a woman, through the instrumentality of Our Lady's role wherein Christ takes on a
human form (the form of a servant), and this is a more substantial thing than an appearance under the guise one thing or another which changes as
conditions and circumstances change. The Holy Spirit does not unite the form of a created thing with his divine being even if it is true that
he uses created things to communicate the reality of his being and existence to whomever he wishes to communicate himself to. Hence, in
conclusion, one cannot conclude that the sending of the Father is to be interpreted in a subordinationist context. All sending is an activity
that each divine person fully shares in.
Notes:
[4.] In his "The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: Mt. 5:8 in Augustine's Trinitarian Theology of 400,"
Modern Theology Summer 2003, pp. 1-48, Michel René Barnes argues that St. Augustine sought to counter the arguments of Homoian theologians
who offered a scriptural exegesis which claimed that the Son was not as divine as the Father. The Son is like the Father but not exactly alike.
The Son does not possess the fullness of divinity which only the Father has. From the Homoian viewpoint, Christ's incarnation argues
against Christ's divinity. Christ's visibility argues against Christ's divinity since the invisibility of God the Father suggests that only God
the Father is fully divine. Since Homoian theologians did not believe that Christ was as divine as his Father, it can therefore be said that
Homian views can be regarded as a species of Arianism where Arianism argues that the Son is not as divine as is God the Father.
[5.] See Lewis Ayres's "‘Remember That You Are Catholic' (sermon 52.2): Augustine on the Unity of the Triune God,"
Journal of Early Christian Studies 2000 8:1: 39-82 for documentation about the fact that the inseparability of the divine operations of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within the Trinity was a commonly accepted belief by the end of the 4th Century. Augustine did not
originate the thesis since the inseparability of divine operations had been argued and posited by St. Ambrose of Milan and Gregory of Nyssa in the east.
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