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Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity
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Fifteen Books of Aurelius Augustinus,
Chapter 2.—In What Manner This Work Proposes to Discourse Concerning the Trinity.
Chapter 4.—What the Doctrine of the Catholic Faith is Concerning the Trinity.
Chapter 7.—In What Manner the Son is Less Than the Father, and Than Himself.
Chapter 9.—All are Sometimes Understood in One Person.
Chapter 11.—By What Rule in the Scriptures It is Understood that the Son is Now Equal and Now Less.
Chapter 4.—The Glorification of the Son by the Father Does Not Prove Inequality.
Chapter 6.—The Creature is Not So Taken by the Holy Spirit as Flesh is by the Word.
Chapter 7.—A Doubt Raised About Divine Appearances.
Chapter 8.—The Entire Trinity Invisible.
Chapter 11.—Of the Same Appearance.
Chapter 12.—The Appearance to Lot is Examined.
Chapter 13.—The Appearance in the Bush.
Chapter 14.—Of the Appearance in the Pillar of Cloud and of Fire.
Chapter 16.—In What Manner Moses Saw God.
Chapter 18.—The Vision of Daniel.
Chapter 1.—What is to Be Said Thereupon.
Chapter 2.—The Will of God is the Higher Cause of All Corporeal Change. This is Shown by an Example.
Chapter 3.—Of the Same Argument.
Chapter 5.—Why Miracles are Not Usual Works.
Chapter 6.—Diversity Alone Makes a Miracle.
Chapter 7.—Great Miracles Wrought by Magic Arts.
Chapter 8.—God Alone Creates Those Things Which are Changed by Magic Art.
Chapter 9.—The Original Cause of All Things is from God.
Chapter 10.—In How Many Ways the Creature is to Be Taken by Way of Sign. The Eucharist.
Preface.—The Knowledge of God is to Be Sought from God.
Chapter 2.—How We are Rendered Apt for the Perception of Truth Through the Incarnate Word.
Chapter 7.—In What Manner We are Gathered from Many into One Through One Mediator.
Chapter 8.—In What Manner Christ Wills that All Shall Be One in Himself.
Chapter 9.—The Same Argument Continued.
Chapter 10.—As Christ is the Mediator of Life, So the Devil is the Mediator of Death.
Chapter 11.—Miracles Which are Done by Demons are to Be Spurned.
Chapter 12.—The Devil the Mediator of Death, Christ of Life.
Chapter 2.—God the Only Unchangeable Essence.
Chapter 4.—The Accidental Always Implies Some Change in the Thing.
Chapter 7.—The Addition of a Negative Does Not Change the Predicament.
Chapter 9.—The Three Persons Not Properly So Called [in a Human Sense].
Chapter 11.—What is Said Relatively in the Trinity.
Chapter 12.—In Relative Things that are Reciprocal, Names are Sometimes Wanting.
Chapter 13.—How the Word Beginning (Principium) is Spoken Relatively in the Trinity.
Chapter 14.—The Father and the Son the Only Beginning (Principium) of the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 15.—Whether the Holy Spirit Was a Gift Before as Well as After He Was Given.
Chapter 16.—What is Said of God in Time, is Said Relatively, Not Accidentally.
Chapter 2 .—What is Said of the Father and Son Together, and What Not.
Chapter 4.—The Same Argument Continued.
Chapter 5.—The Holy Spirit Also is Equal to the Father and the Son in All Things.
Chapter 6.—How God is a Substance Both Simple and Manifold.
Chapter 7.—God is a Trinity, But Not Triple (Triplex).
Chapter 8.—No Addition Can Be Made to the Nature of God.
Chapter 9.—Whether One or the Three Persons Together are Called the Only God.
Chapter 5.—In God, Substance is Spoken Improperly, Essence Properly.
Chapter 1.—It is Shown by Reason that in God Three are Not Anything Greater Than One Person.
Chapter 4.—God Must First Be Known by an Unerring Faith, that He May Be Loved.
Chapter 5.—How the Trinity May Be Loved Though Unknown.
Chapter 6.—How the Man Not Yet Righteous Can Know the Righteous Man Whom He Loves.
Chapter 10.—There are Three Things in Love, as It Were a Trace of the Trinity.
Chapter 1.—In What Way We Must Inquire Concerning the Trinity.
Chapter 5.—That These Three are Several in Themselves, and Mutually All in All.
Chapter 8.—In What Desire and Love Differ.
Chapter 10.—Whether Only Knowledge that is Loved is the Word of the Mind.
Chapter 2.—No One at All Loves Things Unknown.
Chapter 3.—That When the Mind Loves Itself, It is Not Unknown to Itself.
Chapter 4.—How the Mind Knows Itself, Not in Part, But as a Whole.
Chapter 6.—The Opinion Which the Mind Has of Itself is Deceitful.
Chapter 8.—How the Soul Inquires into Itself. Whence Comes the Error of the Soul Concerning Itself.
Chapter 9.—The Mind Knows Itself, by the Very Act of Understanding the Precept to Know Itself.
Chapter 12.—The Mind is an Image of the Trinity in Its Own Memory, and Understanding, and Will.
Chapter 1.—A Trace of the Trinity Also In the Outer Man.
Chapter 4.—How This Unity Comes to Pass.
Chapter 6.—Of What Kind We are to Reckon the Rest (Requies), and End (Finis), of the Will in Vision.
Chapter 7.—There is Another Trinity in the Memory of Him Who Thinks Over Again What He Has Seen.
Chapter 8.—Different Modes of Conceiving.
Chapter 9.—Species is Produced by Species in Succession.
Chapter 11.—Number, Weight, Measure.
Chapter 1.—Of What Kind are the Outer and the Inner Man.
Chapter 6. —Why This Opinion is to Be Rejected.
Chapter 8.—Turning Aside from the Image of God.
Chapter 9.—The Same Argument is Continued.
Chapter 10.—The Lowest Degradation Reached by Degrees.
Chapter 11.—The Image of the Beast in Man.
Chapter 12.—There is a Kind of Hidden Wedlock in the Inner Man. Unlawful Pleasures of the Thoughts.
Chapter 3.—Some Desires Being the Same in All, are Known to Each. The Poet Ennius.
Chapter 8.—Blessedness Cannot Exist Without Immortality.
Chapter 11.—A Difficulty, How We are Justified in the Blood of the Son of God.
Chapter 12.—All, on Account of the Sin of Adam, Were Delivered into the Power of the Devil.
Chapter 13.—Man Was to Be Rescued from the Power of the Devil, Not by Power, But by Righteousness.
Chapter 14.—The Unobligated Death of Christ Has Freed Those Who Were Liable to Death.
Chapter 15.—Of the Same Subject.
Chapter 17.—Other Advantages of the Incarnation.
Chapter 18.—Why the Son of God Took Man Upon Himself from the Race of Adam, and from a Virgin.
Chapter 19.—What in the Incarnate Word Belongs to Knowledge, What to Wisdom.
Chapter 3.—A Difficulty Removed, Which Lies in the Way of What Has Just Been Said.
Chapter 5.—Whether the Mind of Infants Knows Itself.
Chapter 9.—Whether Justice and the Other Virtues Cease to Exist in the Future Life.
Chapter 10.—How a Trinity is Produced by the Mind Remembering, Understanding, and Loving Itself.
Chapter 11.—Whether Memory is Also of Things Present.
Chapter 13.—How Any One Can Forget and Remember God.
Chapter 16.—How the Image of God is Formed Anew in Man.
Chapter 1.—God is Above the Mind.
Chapter 3.—A Brief Recapitulation of All the Previous Books.
Chapter 4.—What Universal Nature Teaches Us Concerning God.
Chapter 5.—How Difficult It is to Demonstrate the Trinity by Natural Reason.
Chapter 8.—How the Apostle Says that God is Now Seen by Us Through a Glass.
Chapter 9.—Of the Term “Enigma,” And of Tropical Modes of Speech.
Chapter 12.—The Academic Philosophy.
Chapter 14.—The Word of God is in All Things Equal to the Father, from Whom It is.
Chapter 16.—Our Word is Never to Be Equalled to the Divine Word, Not Even When We Shall Be Like God.
Chapter 18.—No Gift of God is More Excellent Than Love.
Chapter 24.—The Infirmity of the Human Mind.
Chapter 28.—The Conclusion of the Book with a Prayer, and an Apology for Multitude of Words.
Chapter 11.—By What Rule in the Scriptures It is Understood that the Son is Now Equal and Now Less.
22. Wherefore, having mastered this rule for interpreting the Scriptures concerning the Son of God, that we are to distinguish in them what relates to the form of God, in which He is equal to the Father, and what to the form of a servant which He took, in which He is less than the Father; we shall not be disquieted by apparently contrary and mutually repugnant sayings of the sacred books. For both the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to the form of God, are equal to the Father, because neither of them is a creature, as we have already shown: but according to the form of a servant He is less than the Father, because He Himself has said, “My Father is greater than I;”113 John xiv. 28 and He is less than Himself, because it is said of Him, He emptied Himself;”114 Phil. ii. 7 and He is less than the Holy Spirit, because He Himself says, “Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven Him.”115 Matt. xii. 32 And in the Spirit too He wrought miracles, saying: “But if I with the Spirit of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.”116 Matt. xii. 28 And in Isaiah He says,—in the lesson which He Himself read in the synagogue, and showed without a scruple of doubt to be fulfilled concerning Himself,—“The Spirit of the Lord God,” He says, “is upon me: because He hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek He hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives,”117 Isa. lxi. 1; Luke iv. 18, 19 etc.: for the doing of which things He therefore declares Himself to be “sent,” because the Spirit of God is upon Him. According to the form of God, all things were made by Him;118 John i. 3 according to the form of a servant, He was Himself made of a woman, made under the law.119 Gal. iv. 4 According to the form of God, He and the Father are one;120 John x. 30 according to the form of a servant, He came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him.121 John vi. 38 According to the form of God, “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself;”122 John v. 26. [In communicating the Divine Essence to the Son, in eternal generation, the essence is communicated with all its attributes. Self existence is one of these attributes. In this way, the Father “gives to the Son to have life in himself,” when he makes common (κοινωνεῖν), between Himself and the Son, the one Divine Essence.—W.G.T.S.] according to the form of a servant, His “soul is sorrowful even unto death;” and, “O my Father,” He says, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”123 Matt. xxvi. 38, 39 According to the form of God, “He is the True God, and eternal life;”124 1 John v. 20 according to the form of a servant, “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”125 Phil. ii. 8—23. According to the form of God, all things that the Father hath are His,126 John xvii. 15 and “All mine,” He says, “are Thine, and Thine are mine;”127 John xvii. 10 according to the form of a servant, the doctrine is not His own, but His that sent Him.128 John vii. 16
CAPUT XI.
22. Regula qua intelligitur Filius in Scripturis nunc aequalis, nunc minor. Quapropter, cognita ista regula intelligendarum Scripturarum de Filio Dei, ut distinguamus quid in eis sonet secundum formam Dei, in qua aequalis est Patri, et quid secundum formam servi quam accepit, in qua minor est Patre, non conturbabimur tanquam contrariis ac repugnantibus inter se sanctorum Librorum sententiis. Nam secundum formam Dei aequalis est Patri et Filius et Spiritus sanctus, quia neuter eorum creatura est, sicut jam ostendimus: secundum autem formam servi, minor est Patre, quia ipse dixit: Pater major me est (Joan. XIV, 28): minor est se ipso, quia de illo dictum est, Semetipsam exinanivit (Philipp. II, 7): minor est Spiritu sancto, quia ipse ait, Qui dixerit blasphemiam in Filium hominis, remittetur ei; qui autem dixerit in Spiritum sanctum, non remittetur ei (Matth. XII, 32). Et in ipso virtutes operatus est, dicens: Si ego in Spiritu Dei ejicio daemonia, certe supervenit super vos regnum Dei (Luc. XI, 20). Et apud Isaiam dicit, quam lectionem ipse in synagoga recitavit, et de se completam sine scrupulo dubitationis ostendit. Spiritus, inquit, Domini super me; propter quod unxit me, evangelizare pauperibus misit me, praedicare captivis remissionem (Isai. LXI, 1; Luc. IV, 18, 19), et caetera: ad quae facienda ideo dicit se missum, quia Spiritus Domini est super eum. Secundum formam Dei, omnia per ipsum facta sunt (Joan. I, 3): secundum formam servi, ipse factus est ex muliere, factus sub Lege (Galat. IV, 4). Secundum formam Dei, ipse et Pater unum sunt (Joan. X, 30): secundum formam servi, non venit facere voluntatem suam, sed voluntatem ejus qui eum misit (Id. VI, 38). Secundum formam Dei, sicut habet Pater vitam in semetipso, sic dedit et Filio vitam habere in semetipso (Id. V, 26): secundum formam servi, tristis est anima ejus usque ad mortem; et, Pater, inquit, si fieri potest, transeat a me iste calix (Matth. XXVI, 38, 39). Secundum formam Dei, ipse est verus Deus et vita aeterna (I Joan. V, 20): secundum formam servi, factus est obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis (Philipp. II, 8).
23. Secundum formam Dei, omnia quae habet Pater, ipsius sunt (Joan. XVI, 15): et, Omnia mea tua sunt, inquit, et tua mea (Id. XVII, 10). Secundum formam servi, non est doctrina ipsius, sed illius qui eum misit (Id. VII, 16).