Preface.
I. Doctrinal Treatises of St. Augustin.
On the Holy Trinity
Translated by the Rev. Arthur West Haddan, B.D.
Revised and annotate, together with an introductory essay, by
the Rev. Professor W. G. T. Shedd, D.D.
The Enchiridion
Translated by Professor J. F. Shaw.
On the Catechising of the Uninstructed.
Translated by the Rev. Professor S. D. F. Salmond, D.D.
Concerning Faith of Things not Seen.
Translated by the Rev. C. L. Cornish, M.A.
On the Profit of Believing.
Translated by the Rev. C. L. Cornish, M.A.
On the Creed: A Sermon to Catechumens.
Translated by the Rev. H. Brown, M.A.
II. Moral Treatises of St. Augustin.
Of Continence.
Translated by the Rev. C. L. Cornish, M.A.
On the Good of Marriage.
Translated by the Rev. C. L. Cornish, M.A.
Of Holy Virginity.
Translated by the Rev. C. L. Cornish, M.A.
On the Good of Widowhood.
Translated by the Rev. C. L. Cornish, M.A.
On Lying.
Translated by the Rev. H. Browne, M.A.
To Consentius: Against Lying.
Translated by the Rev. H. Browne, M.A.
Of the Work of Monks.
Translated by the Rev. H. Browne, M.A.
On Patience.
Translated by the Rev. H. Browne, M.A.
On Care to be Had for the Dead.
Translated by the Rev. H. Browne, M.A.
Index to On the Holy Trinity.
Index to Fifteen Doctrinal and Moral Treatises.
St. augustin:
on the Trinity
[De trinitate, libri xv.]
Translated by the
Rev. Arthur West Haddan, B.D.,
Hon. Canon of Worchester, and Rector of Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire.
Revised and Annotated, with an Introductory Essay,
by
William G. T. Shedd, D.D.,
Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology in Union Theological Seminary, New York.
Introductory Essay.
By William G. T. Shedd, D.D.
The doctrine of the Divine Unity is a truth of natural religion; the doctrine of the Trinity is a truth of revealed religion. The various systems of natural theism present arguments for the Divine existence, unity, and attributes, but proceed no further. They do not assert and endeavor to demonstrate that the Supreme Being is three persons in one essence. It is because this doctrine is not discoverable by human reason, that the Christian church has been somewhat shy of attempts to construct it analytically; or even to defend it upon grounds of reason. The keen Dr. South expresses the common sentiment, when he remarks that "as he that denies this fundamental article of the Christian religion may lose his soul, so he that much strives to understand it may lose his wits." Yet all the truths of revelation, like those of natural religion, have in them the element of reason, and are capable of a rational defense. At the very least their self-consistence can be shown, and objections to them can be answered. And this is a rational process. For one of the surest characteristics of reason is, freedom from self contradiction, and consonance with acknowledged truths in other provinces of human inquiry and belief.
It is a remarkable fact, that the earlier forms of Trinitarianism are among the most metaphysical and speculative of any in dogmatic history. The controversy with the Arian and the Semi-Arian, brought out a statement and defense of the truth, not only upon scriptural but ontological grounds. Such a powerful dialectician as Athanasius, while thoroughly and intensely scriptural--while starting from the text of scripture, and subjecting it to a rigorous exegesis--did not hesitate to pursue the Arian and Semi-Arian dialectics to its most recondite fallacy in its subtlest recesses. If any one doubts this, let him read the four Orations of Athanasius, and his defence of the Nicene Decrees. In some sections of Christendom, it has been contended that the doctrine of the Trinity should be received without any attempt at all to establish its rationality and intrinsic necessity. In this case, the tenets of eternal generation and procession have been regarded as going beyond the Scripture data, and if not positively rejected, have been thought to hinder rather than assist faith in three divine persons and one God. But the history of opinions shows that such sections of the church have not proved to be the strongest defenders of the Scripture statement, nor the most successful in keeping clear of the Sabellian, Arian, or even Socinian departure from it.
Those churches which have followed Scripture most implicitly, and have most feared human speculation, are the very churches which have inserted into their creeds the most highly analytic statement that has yet been made of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Nicene Trinitarianism is incorporated into nearly all the symbols of modern Christendom; and this specifies, particularly, the tenets of eternal generation and procession with their corollaries. The English Church, to whose great divines, Hooker, Bull, Waterland, and Pearson, scientific Trinitarianism owes a very lucid and careful statement, has added the Athanasian creed to the Nicene. The Presbyterian churches, distinguished for the closeness of their adherence to the simple Scripture, yet call upon their membership to confess, that "in the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son." [2]
The treatise of Augustin upon the Trinity, which is here made accessible to the English reader, is one of the ablest produced in the patristic age. The author devoted nearly thirty years of his matured life to its composition (A.D. 400 to 428). He was continually touching and retouching it, and would have delayed its publication longer than he did, had a copy not been obtained surreptitiously and published. He seems to have derived little assistance from others; for although the great Greek Trinitarians--Athanasius, the two Gregories, and Basil--had published their treatises, yet he informs us that his knowledge of Greek, though sufficient for understanding the exegetical and practical writings of his brethren of the Greek Church, was not adequate to the best use of their dialectical and metaphysical compositions. [3] Accordingly, there is no trace in this work of the writings of the Greek Trinitarians, though a substantial agreement with them. The only Trinitarian author to whom he alludes is Hilary--a highly acute and abstruse Trinitarian.
In his general position, Augustin agrees with the Nicene creed; but laying more emphasis upon the consubstantiality of the persons, and definitely asserting the procession of the Spirit from the Father and Son. Some dogmatic historians seem to imply that he differed materially from the Nicene doctrine on the point of subordination. Hagenbach (Smith's Ed. § 95) asserts that "Augustin completely purified the dogma of the Trinity from the older vestiges of subordination;" and adds that "such vestiges are unquestionably to be found in the most orthodox Fathers, not only in the East but also in the West." He cites Hilary and Athanasius as examples, and quotes the remark of Gieseler, that "the idea of a subordination lies at the basis of such declarations." Neander (II. 470, Note 2) says that Augustin "kept at a distance everything that bordered on subordinationism." These statements are certainly too sweeping and unqualified. There are three kinds of subordination: the filial or trinitarian; the theanthropic; and the Arian. The first is taught, and the second implied, in the Nicene creed. The last is denied and excluded. Accordingly, dogmatic historians like Petavius, Bull, Waterland, and Pearson, contend that the Nicene creed, in affirming the filial, but denying the Arian subordination; in teaching subordination as to person and relationship, but denying it as to essence; enunciates a revealed truth, and that this is endorsed by all the Trinitarian fathers, Eastern and Western. And there certainly can be no doubt that Augustin held this view. He maintains, over and over again, that Sonship as a relationship is second and subordinate to Fatherhood; that while a Divine Father and a Divine Son must necessarily be of the very same nature and grade of being, like a human father and a human son, yet the latter issues from the former, not the former from the latter. Augustin's phraseology on this point is as positive as that of Athanasius, and in some respects even more bold and capable of misinterpretation. He denominates the Father the "beginning" (principium) of the Son, and the Father and Son the "beginning" (principium) of the Holy Spirit. "The Father is the beginning of the whole divinity, or if it is better so expressed, deity." IV. xx. 29. "In their mutual relation to one another in the Trinity itself, if the begetter is a beginning (principium) in relation to that which he begets, the Father is a beginning in relation to the Son, because he begets Him." V. xiv. 15. Since the Holy Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son, "the Father and Son are a beginning (principium) of the Holy Spirit, not two beginnings." V. xiv. 15. Compare also V. xiii.; X. iv.; and annotations pp. Augustin employs this term "beginning" only in relation to the person, not to the essence. There is no "beginning," or source, when the essence itself is spoken of. Consequently, the "subordination" (implied in a "beginning" by generation and spiration) is not the Arian subordination, as to essence, but the trinitarian subordination, as to person and relation.
Augustin starts with the assumption that man was made in the image of the triune God, the God of revelation; not in the image of the God of natural religion, or the untriune deity of the nations. Consequently, it is to be expected that a trinitarian analogue can be found in his mental constitution. If man is God's image, he will show traces of it in every respect. All acknowledge that the Divine unity, and all the communicable attributes, have their finite correspondents in the unity and attributes of the human mind. But the Latin father goes further than this. This, in his view, is not the whole of the Divine image. When God says, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. i. 26), Augustin understands these words to be spoken by the Trinity, and of the Trinity--by and of the true God, the God of revelation: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. He denies that this is merely the pluralis excellentiæ, and that the meaning of these words would be expressed by a change of the plural to the singular, and to the reading, "Let me make man in my image, after my likeness." "For if the Father alone had made man without the Son, it would not have been written, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'" City of God XVI. vi.; Trinity I. vii. 14. In Augustin's opinion, the Old Testament declaration that God is a unity, does not exclude the New Testament declaration that he is a trinity. "For" says he, "that which is written, Hear O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord' ought certainly not to be understood as if the Son were excepted, or the Holy Spirit were excepted; which one Lord our God we rightly call our Father, as regenerating us by his grace." Trinity V. xi. 12. How far Moses understood the full meaning of the Divine communication and instruction, is one thing. Who it really and actually was that made the communication to him, is another. Even if we assume, though with insufficient reason for so doing, that Moses himself had no intimation of the Trinity, it does not follow that it was not the Trinity that inspired him, and all the Hebrew prophets. The apostle Peter teaches that the Old Testament inspiration was a Trinitarian inspiration, when he says that "the prophets who prophesied of the grace that should come, searched what the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." (1 Pet. i. 10, 11).
In asserting, however, that an image of the Trinity exists in man's nature, Augustin is careful to observe that it is utterly imperfect and inadequate. He has no thought or expectation of clearing up the mystery by any analogy whatever. He often gives expression to his sense of the inscrutability and incomprehensibility of the Supreme Being, in language of the most lowly and awe-struck adoration. "I pray to our Lord God himself, of whom we ought always to think, and yet of whom we are not able to think worthily, and whom no speech is sufficient to declare, that He will grant me both help for understanding and explaining that which I design, and pardon if in anything I offend." V. i. 1. "O Lord the one God, God the Trinity, whatever I have said in these books that is of Thine, may they acknowledge who are Thine; if anything of my own, may it be pardoned both by Thee and by those who are Thine. Amen." XV. xxviii.
Augustin's method in this work is (1.) The exegetical; (2.) The rational. He first deduces the doctrine of the Trinity from Scripture, by a careful collation and combination of the texts, and then defends it against objections, and illustrates it by the analogies which he finds in nature generally, and in the human mind particularly. The Scripture argument is contained in the first seven books; the rational in the last eight. The first part is, of course, the most valuable of the two. Though the reader may not be able to agree with Augustin in his interpretation of some Scripture passages, particularly some which he cites from the Old Testament, he will certainly be impressed by the depth, acumen, and accuracy with which the Latin father reaches and exhausts the meaning of the acknowledged trinitarian texts. Augustin lived in an age when the Scriptures and the Greek and Roman classics were nearly all that the student had, upon which to expend his intellectual force. There was considerable metaphysics, it is true, but no physics, and little mathematics. There was consequently a more undivided and exclusive attention bestowed upon revealed religion as embodied in the Scriptures, and upon ethics and natural religion as contained in the classics, than has ever been bestowed by any subsequent period in Christendom. One result was that scripture was expounded by scripture; things spiritual by things spiritual. This appears in the exegetical part of this treatise. Augustin reasons out of the Scriptures; not out of metaphysics or physics.