"O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest,
Sole knowest thyself, and known unto thyself,
And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself!"--Dante: Paradise xxxiii. 125.
While, however, this analogue from the conditions of finite personality approaches nearer to the eternal distinctions in the Godhead than does that ternary which Augustin employs--namely, memory, understanding, and will--yet like all finite analogies to the Infinite it is inadequate. For the subject-ego, object-ego, and ego-percipient, are not so essentially distinct and completely objective to each other, as are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They cannot employ the personal pronouns in reference to each other. They cannot reciprocally perform acts and discharge functions towards each other, like the Divine Three. Revelation is explicit upon this point. It specifies at least the following twelve actions and relations, that incontestably prove the conscious distinctness and mutual objectivity of the persons of the Trinity. One divine person loves another (John iii. 35); dwells in another (John xiv. 10, 11); knows another (Matt. xi. 27); sends another (Gen. xvi. 7); suffers from another (Zech. xiii. 7-13); addresses another (Heb. i. 8); is the way to another (John xiv. 6); speaks of another (Luke iii. 22); glorifies another (John xvii. 5); confers with another (Gen. i. 26; xi. 7); plans with another (Is. ix. 6); rewards another (Phil. ii. 5-11; Heb. ii. 9).
Such are some of the salient features of this important treatise upon the Trinity. It has its defects; but they pertain to the form more than to the matter; to arrangement and style more than to dogma. Literary excellence is not the forte of the patristic writers. Hardly any of them are literary artists. Lactantius among the Latins, and Chrysostom among the Greeks, are almost the only fathers that have rhetorical grace. And none of them approach the beauty of the classic writers, as seen in the harmonious flow and diction of Plato, and the exquisite finish of Horace and Catullus.
Augustin is prolix, repetitious, and sometimes leaves his theme to discuss cognate but distantly related subjects. This appears more in the last eight chapters, which are speculative, than in the first seven, which are scriptural. The material in this second division is capable of considerable compression. The author frequently employs two illustrations when one would suffice, and three or more when two are enough. He discusses many themes which are not strictly trinitarian.
Yet the patient student will derive some benefit from this discursiveness. He will find, for example, in this treatise on the Trinity, an able examination of the subject of miracles (Book III); of creation ex nihilo (III. ix); of vicarious atonement (IV. vii-xiv); of the faculty of memory (XI. x); and, incidentally, many other high themes are touched upon. Before such a contemplative intellect as that of Augustin, all truth lay spread out like the ocean, with no limits and no separating chasms. Everything is connected and fluid. Consequently, one doctrine inevitably leads to and merges in another, and the eager and intense inquirer rushes forward, and outward, and upward, and downward, in every direction. The only aim is to see all that can be seen, and state all that can be stated. The neglect of the form, and the anxiety after the substance, contribute to the discursiveness. Caring little for proportion in method, and nothing for elegance in diction, the writer, though bringing forth a vast amount of truth, does it at the expense of clearness, conciseness, and grace. Such is the case with the North African father--one of the most voluminous and prolix of authors, yet one of the most original, suggestive, and fertilizing of any.
And this particular treatise is perhaps as pregnant and suggestive as any that Augustin, or any other theologian, ever composed. The doctrine of the Trinity is the most immense of all the doctrines of religion. It is the foundation of theology. Christianity, in the last analysis, is Trinitarianism. Take out of the New Testament the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and there is no God left. Take out of the Christian consciousness the thoughts and affections that relate to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and there is no Christian consciousness left. The Trinity is the constitutive idea of the evangelical theology, and the formative idea of the evangelical experience. The immensity of the doctrine makes it of necessity a mystery; but a mystery which like night enfolds in its unfathomed depths the bright stars--points of light, compared with which there is no light so keen and so glittering. Mysterious as it is, the Trinity of Divine Revelation is the doctrine that holds in it all the hope of man; for it holds within it the infinite pity of the Incarnation and the infinite mercy of the Redemption.
And it shares its mysteriousness with the doctrine of the Divine Eternity. It is difficult to say which is most baffling to human comprehension, the all-comprehending, simultaneous, successionless consciousness of the Infinite One, or his trinal personality. Yet no theist rejects the doctrine of the Divine eternity because of its mystery. The two doctrines are antithetic and correlative. On one of the Northern rivers that flows through a narrow chasm whose depth no plummet has sounded, there stand two cliffs fronting each other, shooting their pinnacles into the blue ether, and sending their roots down to the foundations of the earth. They have named them Trinity and Eternity. So stand, antithetic and confronting, in the Christian scheme, the trinity and eternity of God.
The translation of this treatise is the work of the Rev. Arthur West Haddan, Hon. Canon of Worcester, who, according to a note of the publisher, died while it was passing through the press. It has been compared with the original, and a considerable number of alterations made. The treatise is exceedingly difficult to render into English--probably the most so of any in the author's writings. The changes in some instances were necessary from a misconception of the original; but more often for the purpose of making the meaning of the translator himself more clear. It is believed that a comparison between the original and revised translation will show that the latter is the more intelligible. At the same time, the reviser would not be too confident that in every instance the exact meaning of Augustin has been expressed, by either the translator or reviser.
The annotations of the reviser upon important points in the treatise, it is hoped, will assist the reader in understanding Augustin's reasoning, and also throw some light upon the doctrine of the Trinity.
William G. T. Shedd.
New York, Feb. 1, 1887.
[2] Westminster Confession, II. iii.
[3] That Augustin had considerable acquaintance with Greek is proved by his many references and citations throughout his writings. In this work, see XII. vii. 11; XII. xiv. 22; XIII. x. 14; XIV. i. 1; XV. ix. 15. His statement in III. i. 1, is, that he was "not so familiar with the Greek tongue (Græcæ linguæ non sit nobis tantus habitus), as to be able to read and understand the books that treat of such [metaphysical] topics." In V. viii. 10, he remarks that he does not comprehend the distinction which the Greek Trinitarians make between ousia and hupostasis; which shows that he had not read the work of Gregory of Nyssa, in which it is defined with great clearness. One may have a good knowledge of a language for general purposes, and yet be unfamiliar with its philosophical nomenclature.
[4] For an analysis of Augustin's Trinitarianism, see Bauv: Dreieinigkeitslehre I. 828-885; Gangauf: Des Augustinus speculative Lehre von Gott dem Dreieinigen; Schaff: History, iii. 684 sq.
[5] The Mohammedan conception of the Divine Unity, also, is deistic. In energetically rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity, the Mohammedan is the Oriental Unitarian.
[6] "That view of the divine nature which makes it inconsistent with the Incarnation and Trinity is philosophically imperfect, as well as scripturally incorrect." H. B. Smith: Faith and Philosophy, p. 191.
[7] Upon the necessary conditions of self consciousness in God, see Müller: On Sin, II. 136 sq. (Urwick's Trans ); Dorner: Christian Doctrine, I. 412-465; Christlieb: Modern Doubt, Lecture III.; Kurtz: Sacred History, § 2; Billroth: Religions Philosophie, § 89, 90; Wilberforce: Incarnation, Chapter III; Kidd: On the Trinity, with Candlish's Introduction; Shedd: History of Doctrine, I. 365-368.
Translator's Preface.
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The history of St. Augustin's treatise on the Trinity, as gathered by Tillemont and others from his own allusions to it, may be briefly given. It is placed by him in his Retractations among the works written (which in the present case, it appears, must mean begun) in A.D. 400. In letters of A.D. 410, 414, and at the end of A.D. 415 (Ad Consentium, Ep. 120, and two Ad Evodium, Epp. 162, 169), it is referred to as still unfinished and unpublished. But a letter of A.D. 412 (Ad Marcellinum, Ep. 143) intimates that friends were at that time importuning him, although without success, to complete and publish it. And the letter to Aurelius, which was sent to that bishop with the treatise itself when actually completed, informs us that a portion of it, while it was still unrevised and incomplete, was in fact surreptitiously made public,--a proceeding which the letters above cited postpone apparently until at least after A.D. 415. It was certainly still in hand in A.D. 416, inasmuch as in Book XIII. a quotation occurs from the 12th Book of the De Civitate Dei; and another quotation in Book XV., from the 90th lecture on St. John, indicates most probably a date of at least a year later, viz. A.D. 417. The Retractations, which refer to it, are usually dated not later than A.D. 428. The letter to Bishop Aurelius also informs us that the work was many years in progress, and was begun in St. Augustin's early manhood, and finished in his old age. We may infer from this evidence that it was written by him between A.D. 400, when he was forty-six years old, and had been Bishop of Hippo about four years, and A.D. 428 at the latest; but probably it was published ten or twelve years before this date. He writes of it, indeed, himself, as if the "nonum prematur in annum" very inadequately represented the amount of deliberate and patient thought which a subject so profound and so sacred demanded, and which he had striven to give to it; and as if, even at the very last, he shrank from publishing his work, and was only driven to do so in order to remedy the mischief of its partial and unauthorized publication.
His motive for writing on the subject may be learned from the treatise itself. It was not directed against any individual antagonist, or occasioned by any particular controversial emergency. In fact, his labors upon it were, he says, continually interrupted by the distraction of such controversies. Certain ingenious and subtle theories respecting types or resemblances of the Holy Trinity, traceable in human nature as being the image of God, seemed to him to supply, not indeed a logical proof, but a strong rational presumption, of the truth of the doctrine itself; and thus to make it incumbent upon him to expound and unfold them in order to meet rationalizing objectors upon (so to say) their own ground. He is careful not to deal with these analogies or images as if they either constituted a purely argumentative proof or exhausted the full meaning of the doctrine, upon both which assumptions such speculations have at all times been the fruitful parent both of presumptious theorizing and of grievous heresy. But he nevertheless employs them more affirmatively than would perhaps have been the case. While modern theologians would argue negatively, from the triplicity of independent faculties,--united, nevertheless, in the unity of a single human person,--that any presumption of reason against the Trinity of persons in the Godhead is thereby, if not removed, at least materially and enormously lessened, St. Augustin seems to argue positively from analogous grounds, as though they constituted a direct intimation of the doctrine itself. But he takes especial pains, at the same time, to dwell upon the incapacity of human thought to fathom the depths of the nature of God; and he carefully prefaces his reasonings by a statement of the Scripture evidence of the catholic doctrine as a matter of faith and not of reason, and by an explanation of difficult texts upon the subject. One of the most valuable portions, indeed, of the treatise is the eloquent and profound exposition given in this part of it of the rule of interpretation to be applied to Scripture language respecting the person of our Lord. It should be noticed, however, that a large proportion of St. Augustin's scriptural exegesis is founded upon a close verbal exposition of the old Latin version, and is frequently not borne out by the original text. And the rule followed in rendering Scripture texts in the present translation has been, accordingly, wherever the argument in the context rests upon the variations of the old Latin, there to translate the words as St. Augustin gives them, while adhering otherwise to the language of the authorized English version. The reader's attention may allowably be drawn to the language of Book V. c.x., and to its close resemblance to some of the most remarkable phrases of the Athanasian Creed, and again to the striking passage respecting miracles in Book III. c.v., and to that upon the nature of God at the beginning of Book V.; the last named of which seems to have suggested one of the profoundest passages in the profoundest of Dr. Newman's University Sermons (p. 353, ed. 1843). It may be added, that the writings of the Greek Fathers on the subject were, if not wholly unknown, yet unfamiliar to Augustin, who quotes directly only the Latin work of Hilary of Poictiers.