Book 8
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Outline
In the Divine Trinity, paradoxically, three persons are not greater than one. (1.1)
All bodily analogies to the relationships among the persons of the Trinity mislead. (2.3)
There would be no changeable goods, unless there were an unchangeable good. (3.4–5)
To think of a bodily thing our mind must represent to itself something with bodily features. (4.6–7)
We can represent the Virgin Mary and the Apostle Paul to our mind through a bodily image. (5.7–8)
We know what a mind is because we have one. (6.9)
We know there are other minds by analogical reasoning. (6.9)
We can know what a just mind or soul is through knowledge of the form of justice. (6.9)
We love God and our neighbors from the same love. (7.10–10.14)
Preface
In this Trinity, as we have said elsewhere, those names, which are predicated relatively, the one of the other, are properly spoken of as belonging to each person in particular, as Father and Son, and the Gift of both, the Holy Spirit; for the Father is not the Trinity, nor the Son the Trinity, nor the Gift the Trinity. But when they are spoken of singly with respect to themselves, then they are not spoken of as three in the plural number but as one, the Trinity itself. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; the Father is good, the Son is good, the Holy Spirit is good; and the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent; but yet there are not three gods, nor three goods, nor three omnipotents, but one God, one good, and one omnipotent, the Trinity itself.
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- Information
- Augustine: On the Trinity , pp. 3 - 22Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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