Current Seminar:
• Augustine's De Trinitate
11/18/2006
Book VIII, Introductory Essay, Prologue, Chapters 1-2
Terence Carlson
In his introductory essay to Book VIII, Edmund Hill, the translator of the New Press version of The Trinity, stresses the special role of
Book VIII for the whole of the treatise. In Book VIII, Augustine reverses the movement of thought which had governed the first seven books of
The Trinity. In the first seven books, Augustine has attempted through the use of Scripture to conduct a logical journey from faith in God to a
reasoned understanding of God. Without in any way abandoning his lodestar that “man must first believe if he is to understand,”Augustine is now entering
into a journey from a pre-existing knowledge to faith. Hill cites back to his Introduction of this translation where he admits that he finds Book
VIII the most difficult book of the whole treatise. He believes that Augustine in Book VIII is trying to establish a direct link between the divine
mystery of God and the more understandable mystery of the human person. If man is made in God’s image, then perhaps we can gain a better
understanding of the inner mystery of God through a deeper understanding of inner man. Book VIII marks the transition to the second half of the
whole work, Books IX to XV, which serves, according to Hill, as a mirror image to the first half of the treatise, Books I to VII. In Book IX to
XV, Augustine presents arguments for the trinitarian image in man to better grasp the divine mystery, just as in Books I to VII, he employed a
Trinitarian language to talk about God.
Hill entitles Book VIII “Through the Looking Glass,” invoking Lewis Carroll’s classic fantasy, “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” to emphasize
Augustine’s use of platonic language. Echoing Plato, Augustine assumes a real, eternal world of ideas with God as the Creator, and a less than
real world of time also created by God and inhabited by man, which imperfectly reflects and imperfectly participates in the divine world. For
the seeker of God, the fundamental problem is the barrier between the two worlds and establishing communication with God. According to Hill, in
the first seven chapters of the Trinity, Augustine’s ad hoc solution to the communications problem between man and God is faith. For God,
one would assume, there is no communications problem, for He can communicate when He wants by revelation. If man responds to this revelation by
faith, communication is established. In Book VIII, Augustine begins to ask whether faith can really serve as a possible substitute for the
knowledge of God when we have no pre-existing direct categories of knowledge to place God. Augustine in Book VIII explores man’s direct knowledge of
certain objective values, such as truth, the good, justice and therefore an indirect knowledge of God as the very source of those objective
values. The knowledge of these objective values does give man sufficient indirect knowledge of God to provide a rational meaning for the word God
and to make faith statements about God.
In his Prologue to Book VIII, Augustine again emphasizes the unity of the Trinity. Whatever each Person is called, the Trinity is
called. Augustine states “The reason they are said to be three persons or three substances is not to signify any diversity of being, but to have
at least one word when asked three what or three who.” There is such equality among the Trinity that not only is the Father not greater than the
Son, but two Persons of the Trinity could never be greater than the Third. Augustine in closing the Prologue invokes the merciful Creator to
assist us in discussing matters in a more inward manner.
In Chapter 1 of Book VIII, Augustine again emphasizes the equality of the Persons of the Trinity. He also portrays man as emerging from
shadowy depths to escape material perceptions in order to gain spiritual conceptions, which are intelligible. To fully understand what God is,
we must understand what he is not. Man must escape his bodily worldly attachments to begin to understand that God is truth.
In Chapter 2 of Book VIII, Augustine states that man can only love what is good and lists many of the goods of the earthly world: beautiful farms,
harmonious architecture, and a melodious song. All these goods derive from the unchanging good itself, God. Augustine points out that man
should be able to love the good in these created objects and ultimately obtain the love of God by tracing the good to its ultimate source,
God. Augustine notes that tragically man’s clouded intellect and twisted appetites misuse these created goods to disrupt our journey to the love
of God. Augustine closes the chapter by quoting Acts 17.27. This good then “is not situated far from anyone of us; for in it we live and move
and are.”
|
