The Trinity, Explained
Augustine of Hippo
January 1, 1999
"Augustine wrote 117 books, thousands of sermons (nearly 1,000 have been preserved) and countless letters (we still have several hundred). All but two of his works were responses to someone else's need or questions (for example, his massive City of God began as a response to his friend Marcellinus's urgent plea for help in converting a Roman proconsul to Christianity).
"It's interesting, then, to consider the two topics Augustine took up when he wrote "for himself": the meaning of Creation (in the work On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis) and the doctrine of the Trinity (in the work On the Trinity). In On the Trinity Augustine pioneered the use of human personality as an analogy for the Trinity. In a single human being, he argued, there are several sets of triadic operations: being, knowing, and willing; memory, intelligence, and will; mind, knowledge, and love. A person in love is at once a lover and a beloved, with love itself completing the triad. One modern scholar has described this work as a "crushing blow" to critics who thought the idea of God as three in one was for fools.
"But Augustine's tone in this work is hardly that of rhetorical conquest—rather it embodies the profound humility of one who was wrestling with perplexing and mysterious issues. Augustine's attempt was bold, but his self-appraisal was modest. In form, then, as well as content, On the Trinity could be a model for Christian conversation—especially on difficult and controversial topics."—Stanley P. Rosenberg
From now on I begin to speak of subjects, which are altogether above the power of any man, or at least of myself, to express in words as they are conceived in the mind; even our thinking itself, when we reflect on God the Trinity, is conscious ...
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