Current Seminar:
• Augustine's De Trinitate
10/28/2006
Book VII, Chapter 1
Kieran Dickinson
In Book VII, Chapter 1, St Augustine continues the discussion from Book VI on St. Paul’s problematic passage: “Christ the power and wisdom of
God.” The problem is that the passage appears to suggest that somehow only Christ is the power and wisdom of God and that the Father is
not. In Book VI, St. Augustine offered a tentative solution: the Father, too, is wisdom and power, but he is wise and powerful with the
wisdom and power he begets in the Son. Chapter 1 of Book VII is devoted to demolishing this tentative solution so that it can be replaced
with a better one.
St. Augustine’s rhetorical technique is the argument by reductio ad absurdum or, viewed in a different light, it is what law students
everywhere know as “hiding the ball.” The argument leading to the dead end is dense and tangled, but St. Augustine clearly believes that
it is necessary to inflict it on his readers so that we may, in great relief, accept his much simpler solution to the problem when he finally
reveals it.
The argument St. Augustine eventually rejects goes something like this.
Ø Wisdom and power are like “Word.” In other words, just
as God the Father utters the Word but is himself not the Word he utters, so, too God the Father begets wisdom and power in the Son but the Father
is himself not wisdom and power (or, for that matter, any of the other qualities he begets in the Son, such as greatness or goodness). The Father
is thus only wise, powerful, good, etc. in relationship to the Son. Combining now this conclusion with one of his most often used conclusions that
appears throughout the book – since God is simple it is the same thing for him to be and to be any of his qualities – it follows that everything said of
the Father, right down to his very existence, must be said by way of relationship. In other words, the Father has no being apart from the Son he
begot.
Ø From this assertion, a number of conclusions can be drawn,
each one more doubtful than the last. These include, among others, the conclusion that Christ is not the power and wisdom of God and that “to be”
with the Father is not the same as to be wise (therefore the Father is not always wise and is not supremely simple and perfect). Another necessary
conclusion is that only the Son can be anything in himself (as opposed to by relationship). But this seems quite doubtful in view of Scripture’s
calling Christ the image of the Father – an image is usually a reflection of something or someone else rather than of itself. Still, it could be
explained if image were seen as a relationship word and wisdom and power were seen as substance words. But if we say this, then it follows that
the Father is neither wise nor powerful – for we just said that wisdom and power are not relationship words while the problematic passage posits such a
relationship. And if we reverse ourselves and say that wisdom and power are relationship words, then being must also be a relationship
word. This, in turn, leads to the conclusion that the Son only has being in relationship. Hence being is not really being, and that is
absurd.
The fog begins to lift when St. Augustine compares wisdom to color. In the first case St. Augustine asserts that wisdom has an independent
existence apart from the wise. The wise, after all, may become foolish, but this does not alter Wisdom. In the second case, color has
no existence apart from the form that it colors. Once the form changes from white to green, for example, the whiteness is gone.
Applying this analogy to the question, St. Augustine argues that if the Father is only wise with the wisdom he begot and if for him to be and to
be wise are not the same thing, then the Son is merely a quality of his (like a color) and God is therefore not absolutely simple. But for St.
Augustine the simplicity of God is absolutely self-evident, and he rejects this possibility out of hand. God must be wise in the same way that
he has being and not in the same way that a rose is red. The cause of his being wise is the cause of his being at all. The Father is
himself wisdom and the Son is called the wisdom of the Father. The same can be said of light, being, power, etc. Deum de Deo, Lumen de
Lumine, Deum Verum de Deo Vero.
Book VII, Chapters 1-2
Br. Dunstan Robidoux, OSB
In chapter 1 in Book 7, St. Augustine returns to the question which he had been posing about whether God the Father has divine attributes by
begetting a Son who has these attributes. If this were so, then one would have to argue that, by begetting a Son, the Father begets
himself. God the Father has no substantive existence in and of himself. He would have to be by bringing another into being. But, in
saying this, one would have to deny the full divinity of God the Father. But then, if God the Father is not fully and truly divine, God the Son
cannot be fully and truly divine since it is accepted and taught that God the Son proceeds from God the Father. In addition, it should be noted
that, if the Son gets his being from the Father and the Father has so substantive existence of his own, then it cannot be said that the Son gets his
being from the Father, the Father having no being to give to another. These problems thus encourage one to emphasize more strongly than before
the fact that substantive predicates or attributes must be strongly and carefully distinguished from relational predicates or
attributes. Augustine does not explicitly refer at this point to Aristotle at his point and Aristotle’s distinction between substance and
accident. However, Augustine does strongly distinguish between the being of a thing and how a given thing is used. Father and Son share
in the same being. They possess the same set of essential or substantial attributes without being two gods. If one wants to speak, for example,
about the wisdom of God the Son who is known as God the Word or God’s Word, one must acknowledge different senses. Wisdom is a predicate that is
shared by both God the Father and God the Son. Each is fully wise, but if we do try and speak of the wisdom of God the Son, a different meaning or
sense is to be grasped as one speaks of Word or invokes the term “Word” as a relational predicate that normally refers to only one divine person: the Son
who proceeds from the Father. As Augustine goes on to speak of this matter in chapter 2, “Wisdom” has been and is traditionally associated with God
the Son as God’s Word since our understanding of the appropriateness of this usage is based on our understanding about how “word” is related to
“wisdom.” If wisdom refers to a quality of understanding (someone who is wise possesses great understanding), it follows that “word” refers to a
revelation of this wisdom. It is a point of access or a reflection of this wisdom. Augustine does not compare an outer word of speech with
the kind of word that God the Son is. The Son is an inner word which exists eternally. And yet, as an eternal inner word, from it comes a
communication that moves into the created order of things and which makes God known to created being (primarily ourselves). It is but natural and
reasonable that, from God the Son who exists as a divine inner word, it should become an outer word by an incarnation which enters the space and time
of created things. By coming to know who Christ is and by trying to abide by his example, we can begin to live wisely in the lives that we begin
to live. The fact that God the Holy Spirit shares the same being which is shared by God the Father and God the Son explains why the Holy Spirit
is as wise as both Father and Son since the Holy Spirit is as divine as Father and Son. For other reasons, the Holy Spirit is referred to as love
and not as wisdom.
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