On the Trinity (De Trinitate)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Marcus Dods
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~260,000 words · 1,229 passages
Cite this work
- APAAugustine. (n.d.). On the Trinity (De Trinitate) (Marcus Dods, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/augustine/on-the-trinity-de-trinitate
- MLAAugustine. On the Trinity (De Trinitate). Translated by Marcus Dods. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/augustine/on-the-trinity-de-trinitate.
- ChicagoAugustine. On the Trinity (De Trinitate). Translated by Marcus Dods. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/augustine/on-the-trinity-de-trinitate.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Fifteen books on how God can be one and three, and on why the human soul is the best place to look for an image of it: memory, understanding and will as three things that are one.
Context and history
He was at it for more than twenty years, and not by choice. He relates himself that the half-finished books were stolen and put into circulation without his leave, which forced him both to finish the work and to correct the version already loose in the world. The early books deal with the biblical text and the later ones with the mind: it is the psychological part that had the longest posterity, and much of the Western way of talking about inwardness comes from it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The equality of the Trinity maintained against objections drawn from those texts which speak of the sending of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, . 42 BOOK III. The appearances of God to the Old Testament saints are discussed, . .79 BOOK IV. Augustine explains for what the Son of God was sent ; but, however, that the Son of God, although made less by being sent, is not therefore less because the Father sent Him ; nor yet the Holy Spirit less because both the Father sent Him and the Son, 107 BOOK V. He proceeds to refute those arguments which the heretics put forward, not out of the Scriptures, but from their own conceptions. And first he refutes the objection, that to beget and to be begotten, or that to be begotten and not-begotten, being different, are therefore difierent substances, and shows that these things are spoken of God relatively, and not according to substance, 145 BOOK VI. In reply to the argument alleged against the equality of the Son from the apostle's words, saying that Christ is the "power of God and the wisdom of God," he propounds the question whether the Father Himself is not wisdom. But deferring for a while the answer to this, he adduces xii CONTENTS. further proof of the unity and equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ; and that God ought to be said and believed to be a Trinity, not threefold. And he adds an explanation of the saying of Hilary — Eternity in the Father, Appearance in the Image, and Use in the Gift, 165 BOOK VIl. He resolves the question he had deferred, and teaches us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one power and one wisdom, no otherwise than one God and one essence. And he then inquires how it is that, in speaking of God, the Latins say, One essence, three persons ; but the Greeks, One essence, three substances or hypostases, BOOK VIII.