Augustine and the Trinity: Whose Crisis? (original) (raw)

Augustine's Trinitarian Cosmos as published

Dionysius, 2017

AUGUSTINE’S TRINITARIAN COSMOS for God Everyday and Everywhere, the 37th Annual Atlantic Theological Conference, June 22nd 2017 at the University of King’s College This paper and my “The Conversion of God in Aquinas’ Summa theologiae” concern the Divine Trinitarian life, in itself, and as the reality of everything else. If Being is Trinitarian and Incarnational for Aquinas, then, for him, as much as for Augustine, God is everyday and everywhere. Augustine’s Confessions and Aquinas’ Summa both move to God as Trinity from incomplete manifestations of the fundamental Trinitarian structure of reality. For them, the totality of the self-differentiation in the divine self-conversion must be revealed step by step. That self-othering, and the co-relative gathering-return back into the originating self, are not seen immediately. The disclosure of real opposition in God, constructing three infinite divine subsistences, “persons”, requires the Christian revelation. Nonetheless, as Dr Diamond’s paper last evening showed, because both are Aristotelian in their doctrine of God as self-thinking, they share a philosophical trinitarianism which is common to pagans, Jews, and Muslims. The ways Aquinas and Augustine treat the Trinity are related as the Way Up and the Way Down, in the manner Aquinas understood Heraclitus: “The way up and the way down are the same”. Yesterday I exhibited this structure in its outward emanation in Aquinas’ Summa. In complementary contrast now, with the hope of illumining both, I look at the upward movement towards an ever clearer revelation of the fundamental trinitarian constitution of the whole in “Augustine’s Trinitarian Cosmos”. My paper is largely devoted to bringing out how, in the Confessions, God’s Trinitarian life is both his own being and that of everything else in the cosmos. Augustine’s Trinitarian God is everyday and everywhere. By way of conclusion, I convey the radical and deeply serious criticism of Augustine and Augustinian Christianity by a few great French philosophical theologians of the 20th-century.

Augustine's Trinitarian Cosmos, March 18, 2017

AUGUSTINE’S TRINITARIAN COSMOS, for God Everyday and Everywhere, the 37th Annual Atlantic Theological Conference, June 22nd 2017 at the University of King’s College. Background Paper. After writing both this paper and “The Conversion of God in Aquinas’ Summa theologiae: Being’s Trinitarian and Incarnational Self Disclosure” for the “Wisdom Belongs to God” Colloquium, I see that they are related as the Way Up and the Way Down, more or less in the manner Aquinas understood the ancient law. Heraclitus had declared: “The way up and the way down are the same” “ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή” (Diels, B60). Without citing its source, Aquinas quotes the formula with approval at the beginning of the last Part of his Summa contra Gentiles: “eadem est via qua descenditur et ascenditur.” Confronting the inadequacy of the human intellect for “seeing the divine substance in itself,” St Thomas tells us we can get to the knowledge we need and desire starting from creatures, from “the things themselves”, because the way up and the way down are the same. There is a common structure at work whether the mind moves from God or from creatures. The starting and ending points differ, but, because of the universal return to source, they too are the same ultimately. The same fundamental form is discernable and at work in the beginning, the mediation, and the conclusion. Aquinas finds “the most perfect unity, in God, the highest summit of things”, from this emerges a greater and greater “diversity and variation in things.” So, “the process of emanation from God must be unified in the principle itself, but multiplied in the lower things which are its terms.” The emanation, or going out, is seen in God in a simple form, the one proper to its nature as cause. The same structure must be visible, opened up and multiplied, in the various creatures which are the end terms of the divine creative activity. This inclusive opening and multiplication is the mediating process. I seem to have exhibited this common structure in its downward emanation in “The Conversion of God in Aquinas’ Summa theologiae” and in its upward movement towards an ever clearer revelation of its fundamental constitution in what follows on “Augustine’s Trinitarian Cosmos”. In consequence, I hope that they will illumine each other and make reading both useful. I present here what I call a “background paper”. It provides the full argument of what I shall present in an abbreviated version at the Atlantic Theological Conference. *** I. INTRODUCTION This paper has two parts. In the first I bring out, almost exclusively from the Confessions, how God’s Trinitarian life is both his own being and that of everything else in the cosmos; in humans, God, as the structure of our being, is that by which we are, know and love; the power by which we do good and do evil. Augustine’s Trinitarian God is everyday and everywhere. In the second part, I bring before you the radical and deeply serious criticism of Augustine and Augustinian Christianity by a few great philosophical theologians of the 20th-century. Although such criticism can be found elsewhere, among Eastern Christian theologians for example, I confine myself to what is self-criticism because it comes from those raised by and deeply immersed in the Latin theological tradition.

Perception in Augustine's De Trin. 11: A Non-Trinitarian Analysis

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy , 2020

In this paper, I explore Augustine’s account of sense cognition in book 11 of De Trinitate. His discussion in this context focuses on two types of sensory state—what he calls “outer vision” and “inner vision,” respectively. His analysis of both types of state is designed to show that cognitive acts involving external and internal sense faculties are susceptible of a kind of trinitarian analysis. A common way to read De Trin. 11, is to interpret Augustine’s account of “outer” vision as an analysis of sense perception and his account “inner” vision as an analysis of occurrent sensory memory and imagination. I argue against such a reading of De Trin. 11, however. Insofar as we take perception to be a phenomenally conscious mode of sensory awareness, outer vision cannot, I claim, be the equivalent of ordinary sense perception. For, on Augustine’s view, the deliverances of outer vision only reach the threshold of consciousness, when outer vision occurs in conjunction with inner vision. Hence, on my analysis, sense perception turns out to be a complex, hybrid state—one that involves both outer and inner vision. If I am right, acts of sense perception turn out not to be directly susceptible to trinitarian analysis. Even so, the account is interesting and nuanced for all that.

Augustine's Trinitarian Cosmos, Complete

Augustine’s Trinitarian Cosmos for God Everyday and Everywhere, the 37th Annual Atlantic Theological Conference June 22nd 2017 at the University of King’s College Wayne J. Hankey DRAFT Please send comments and suggestions to me at hankeywj@dal.ca INTRODUCTION This paper has two parts. In the first I bring out, almost exclusively from the Confessions, how God’s Trinitarian life is both his own being and that of everything else in the cosmos; in humans God, as the structure of our being, is that by which we are, know and love; the power by which we do good and do evil. Augustine’s Trinitarian God is everyday and everywhere. In the second part, I bring before you the radical and deeply serious criticism of Augustine and Augustinian Christianity by the some of the greatest theologians and philosophers of the 20th-century. Although such criticism can be found elsewhere, among Eastern Christian theologians for example, I confine myself to what is self-criticism because it comes from those raised by and deeply immersed in the Latin theological tradition.

Augustine's Trinitarian Cosmos, for God Everyday and Everywhere

This paper has two parts. In the first I bring out, almost exclusively from the Confessions, how God’s Trinitarian life is both his own being and that of everything else in the cosmos; in humans, God, as the structure of our being, is that by which we are, know and love; the power by which we do good and do evil. Augustine’s Trinitarian God is everyday and everywhere. In the second part, I bring before you the radical and deeply serious criticism of Augustine and Augustinian Christianity by a few great philosophical theologians of the 20th-century. Although such criticism can be found elsewhere, among Eastern Christian theologians for example, I confine myself to what is self-criticism because it comes from those raised by and deeply immersed in the Latin theological tradition.

Trinity and Apologetics In the Theology of St. Augustine

Modern Theology, 2013

This article aspires to make a modest contribution to the study of the De Trinitate of St. Augustine, by way of suggestion, though in a somewhat curious way. I hope to clarify some of the issues of intention and character of the De Trinitate largely by studying not that work, but another of Augustine's major works, the City of God. Because the largest concentration of patristic theology on the Trinity is in works directed against heretical Christians, such as Tertullian's Adversus Praxeam, Athanasius's Orations or Hilary's De Fide, and indeed, in part, Augustine's De Trinitate, we have come to think of the Trinity as a subject mainly for intra-Christian theological conversation. We can forget that the Trinity was also a subject taken up in ancient apologetics. One need only recall Justin Martyr's exposition and development of his Logos theology in his First and Second Apology as one of the most brilliant illustrations of how true this is. Justin, on the one hand, wants to show how faith in Christ is, with the philosophers and against pagan mythology, on the side of "reason" or logos, and yet he also wants to show, against pagan philosophy, how the doctrine of "Reason" Incarnate does not leave one with a "religion within the limits of pure reason alone," as though "Reason" itself could be fully known apart from Christ. Rather, the Incarnation of the Logos reveals the philosophical reasoning of even someone as great as Socrates as merely a "seed" of something whose full stature cannot be imagined apart from Christian faith that "Reason" became Incarnate in Christ, suffered and died for us. 1