Current Seminar:
• Augustine's De Trinitate
8/19/2006
Book IV, Chapter 5, Footnotes 83-112
James Zwolenik
ABSTRACT of Chapter 5
1. Focuses on the “mission” of the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Mitto, misi, missum, 3. to send, let go, dispatch)
2. Recognizes that “being sent” does not imply that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not equal to the Father.
3. Concludes that the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s being “sent into the world in time” manifests to the world that they “proceed
from the Father in eternity.”
4. Notes that The Holy Spirit “proceeds eternally” from the Son as well as the Father because the Holy Spirit “was sent into the
world” by the Father and by the Son.
5. Acknowledges that the Father “manifests” Himself to the world in sensible phenomena, but the Father “was never sent.” Therefore
the Father does not “proceed from either of the other” Persons of the Trinity in the sense that He was never “sent into the world”.
6. Concludes with a discussion of the mechanisms of how the manifestations in time of the Two Divine Persons occurred, but reaches no
conclusions on these matters.
Paragraphs in the Text
25. Testimonies to the Mission of Christ
26. When therefore the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, Gal 4:4 …” – Development of
“sent in that he was made.”
27. Development of “the Father sends the Son,” “the begotten and the begetter,” and the Son as “the Father’s Word which is also called
his Wisdom.”
28. Reflection on “So the Word of God is sent by him whose Word he is; sent by him he is born of.”
29. “And just as being born means for the Son his being from the Father, so his being sent means his being known to be from him. And
just as for the Holy Spirit his being the Gift of God means his proceeding from the Father, so his being sent means his being known to
proceed from him.” (Footnote 95: “These two sentences are the culmination of the whole discussion of the divine missions from Book II
onward” in that “they state that it is the missions which reveal the inner core of the Trinitarian mystery.”) “Nor, by the way, can we
say that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son as well; it is not without point that the same Spirit is called the Spirit of the
Father and of the Son.”
30. A discourse on “So a certain man was coupled and even in a certain sense compounded, with the Word of God as one person, when the Son
of God was sent into this world (Jn 16:28; 3:17) at the fullness of time, made of a woman (Gal 4:4), in order to be also the
Son of man for the sake of the sons of men.”
31. Some thoughts are developed on the mechanisms of “voices”, “perceptible forms or likenesses” and then for the “incarnation.”<
30. Short summary of important points.
Oxford Dictionary Definition
Mission
- The action or act of sending
- a sending or being sent to perform some function or service; Theol. The sending of the Second or Third Person of the Trinity
by the First, or of the Third Person by the Second, for the production of a temporal effect.
8/19/2006
Book IV, Chapter 5
Br, Dunstan Robidoux OSB
In the last chapter of Book 4 in St. Augustine’s De Trinitate, St. Augustine speaks about the sending of God
the Son and God the Holy Spirit but in a way which connects the sending of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit with a procession that
ultimately comes from God the Father who is “unoriginate” or the beginning of processions within the Trinity. In the sending of the Son,
one can understand this from the viewpoint of what happens in the Trinity and also from what happens with respect to Christ’s entry in the
created order of things. Within the Trinity, since the Father functions as the point of origin for a procession that establishes a
relation between Father and Son, one can advert to a sending that is from the Father to the Son although this sending is not to be interpreted
in a way which takes away from the equal divinity that the Son has in relation to the Father. However, as one attends to the sending
which occurs in the Trinity, one finds a kind of precondition or a fittingness which pertains with respect to the Son, i.e., more so than any
other person, it is right and proper that the Son be the person in the Trinity who is sent into the world to assume a human form and so live
as if he were a created human being. As the Son proceeds from the Father as light proceeds from light, this same metaphor helps one to
understand something of the purpose of Christ’s mission in coming into the world: to dispel darkness by the light that he brings. That
the sending of Christ into the world is done in an incarnate fashion is explained by the fact that God works with the created order as he
finds it and as he has created it. Human beings come to a true knowledge of things in a created way (since human understanding works
by combining sensible and intellectual operations) and so God’s solicitude for human beings is displayed by the lowliness of Christ’s entry
into the world. By perceiving little things, great things, great truths are known. The lowliness of Christ’s entry into the world
is not explained in a satisfactory way if one only tries to argue that the reason is a desire to communicate certain teachings about justice
and charity. Deeper reasons can be postulated which have to do with the fragility of our human existence and how best growth in human
knowledge and understanding is achieved.
In speaking about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit can be understood as someone who is sent both within the Trinity and into human
history. In the Trinity, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and also from the Son. The proceeding does not derogate from
the equal divinity which also belongs to God the Holy Spirit. However, while the sending of Christ into the world as incarnate was
a unique event, the sending of the Holy Spirit was and is not unique. It has occurred on more than one occasion since the Holy Spirit
works interiorily within human souls and was never incarnate as Christ was. Christ, as incarnate, worked in a way from without to
reach human souls while the Holy Spirit works from within although this working from within occurs in tandem with the external events of
Christ’s life. One builds on the other in a way which shows how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work together in an inseparable way even
as each works through physical signs and creatures that are distinguished from each other according to conjugates which employ spatial and
temporal coordinates.
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