If we now turn to De Trinitate,7 we see how Augustine takes all this much further, and at the same time begins to develop his own trinitarian mystical theology. The whole context has now changed. We no longer have Plotinian exercises by which the soul seeks to assuage her restlessness by Wnding a deep enough satisfaction for her longing. Rather we start with God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture and the Church. The Wrst seven books of De Trinitate attempt to establish from Scripture what God has revealed of Himself. And God has revealed Himself as Trinity. Augustine then seeks to understand what he believes. In this he moves from an attempt to illustrate his belief — ‘understand’ in that sense — to an outline of how the soul
7 In the edition in the Bibliothe`que Augustinienne (vol. 15 edited by M. Mellet and Th. Camelot, vol. 16 by P. Agae¨sse and J. Moingt, Paris 1955). There is an English translation of books VIII–X, XIV, and XV by J. Burnaby in Augustine: Later Writings, Library of Christian Classics VIII (SCM Press, 1955), which I have generally used, where available.
can come to contemplate the God in whom she believes. The latter half of De Trinitate concerns, then, the soul’s ascent to God. All this is informed by Augustine’s understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, drawn from Scripture and Tradition.
The key to his understanding of the soul’s ascent to God is his doctrine that the soul is created in the image and likeness of God. Augustine’s understanding of this marks a new departure in the history of theology. According to Greek theology — and Ambrose and the early Augustine — it is the Son, the Word of God, who is the image of God; man is only created according to the image of God: he is therefore a copy of the Word, the true image of God, an image of the Image. For the later Augustine, such an understanding of the doctrine of the image of God is subordinationist: the Son is God, co-equal with the Father, not the image of the Father. The image must be something other than God. For Augustine the image of God is man, or to be precise, man’s rational soul. And since God is the Trinity, the image of God in man’s soul is trinitarian. That is why in Genesis God says, ‘Let us make man after our image, in our likeness.’ The reason why Scripture speaks of man being created after the image is not because man is not actually the image of God (as earlier theology had argued) but because man is not a perfect, or equal, image of God. So Augustine says,
For why the ‘our’, if the Son is the image of the Father alone? But it is on account of the imperfect likeness, as we have said, that man is spoken of as ‘after the image’, and so ‘our’, that man might be an image of the Trinity; not equal to the Trinity, as the Son is to the Father, but approaching it, as is said, by a certain likeness; as in things distinct there can be closeness, not however in this case spatially, but by imitation. (VII.vi.12)
Behind Augustine’s use of the idea of the image lies the inXuence of Plotinus. For Plotinus the notion of the image is important in his understanding of the movement of procession and return: what proceeds is an image of that from which it proceeds: Intelligence is an image of the One, and Soul an image of Intelligence. An image is like that of which it is the image, but less than it; and more import- antly, the image derives immediately — without any intermediary — from that of which it is the image. Further, the image seeks to return to that of which it is the image — it longs for its archetype. In virtue 142 Augustine
of the likeness that exists between image and archetype, the image can know the archetype — like is known by like — and by contem- plating the archetype can come to know the archetype more deeply, and so become more like the archetype. In fact the act of contem- plation is the act of return. Now the act of contemplation is an act of introversion, since to ascend in the scale of being is to enter more deeply into oneself, into the centre of one’s being.
It is this understanding of the image that Augustine adopts and explores. For him the starting-point is that man is the image of God. This is his starting-point, not something that he discovers: it is something revealed in the Scriptures. But the meaning of man’s image-likeness to God is found in what we have just discussed: Plotinus’ doctrine of the image. Man is the image of God because he is the immediate creation of God, because there is no nature interposed between man and God:
Not everything that among creatures bears some likeness to God is rightly called his image, but only that than which God alone is more exalted. That is directly drawn from Him, if between Himself and it there is no interposed
nature. (XI.v.8)
With this understanding of the relationship of the soul to God, Augustine seeks to show in De Trinitate how the soul can return to God. This itinerarium mentis ad deum — to borrow the phrase of the deeply Augustinian Bonaventure — begins in earnest in Book VIII. The quest falls into two parts. In books VIII–X Augustine seeks to discover the true nature of man: the Wrst step in the search of God is to seek to discover one’s self.8 Without true self-knowledge man has only a distorted idea of the image of God in himself, and so the way to God is Xawed from the start. In this section of De Trinitate we see clearly something that is often overlooked: that Augustine is less concerned to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity from his understanding of man, than to discover the true nature of man by means of the doctrine of the Trinity that he believes by faith. In the second section Augustine seeks to show how this image of God in man can be turned to God so that it can truly reXect Him and man know Him most deeply.
8 Cf. 139 above.
In Book VIII Augustine begins, in a way by now familiar to us, by discussing the soul’s search for the truth:
Behold and see, if you can, O soul encumbered with a body that is corrupted, and weighed down by many and varied thoughts, behold and see, if you can: God is Truth. For this is written: ‘God is light’: not the light these eyes see, but what the heart hears when you hear these words: ‘He is Truth’. Do not seek what that truth is; for at once the darkness of bodily images and the clouds of imagination crowd in and disturb that serenity which illuminated you in a sudden Xash (primu ictu), when I said: ‘Truth’. Behold: in that Wrst Xash by which you were seized as by a blinding light when there is said ‘Truth’, remain if you can. But you cannot, you fall back into things accustomed and earthly. By what weight are you at last dragged back, I ask, unless conquered by the desire for what is tawdry and by the errors of our wandering? (VIII.ii.3)
The language here (in particular the use of the word ictus) recalls Augustine’s reXections on ecstasy and accounts of it (see above, p. 132). In these accounts though, the ecstasy, the rapture, the Xash of vision, is represented as the summit of the mystic quest, even though it is Xeeting, something that allows men a glimpse, but no more than a glimpse, of the joys of heaven. In De Trinitate, however, its context is quite diVerent. It is not the summit of anything: it is rather the beginning. The Xash of vision that discloses a Xeeting glimpse of truth in itself opens up the possibility of the quest, it is not at all the goal of the quest. Here we have an extraordinary break with Plotinus: what for Plotinus is the culmination of the soul’s experience is for the mature Augustine only the beginning of the way. That this is a settled conviction of the mature Augustine can be seen from his Homilies on John. There too we have the idea of a dimly perceived signiWcance that dawns upon the soul when it thinks of God (1.8), so that it is as if we were looking from afar towards our homeland, and the sea lay in between. We can see where we would be and yet the sea of this world lies in between, which we cannot cross in our own strength. It is only Christ, who comes from our homeland to us in this world, who can enable us to pass from hence to there. He does this by making available a wooden vessel which can traverse the sea. ‘For no one can cross the sea of this world unless he is carried by the cross of Christ’ (II.2).
The soul, awakened by the Xash of vision, longs for the truth, longs to be able to contemplate the truth not just Xeetingly, but in an abiding way. So it is a longing that cannot be satisWed with any particular goods, any particular truths, but only with the Good Itself, the Truth Itself — God Himself. The soul longs for God; it loves the God whom it hopes ultimately to see. But how can anyone love that which he does not know? How can one love anything one does not know? It is this puzzle, which is more than an intellectual conun- drum, that Augustine uses to ‘open up’, as it were, the soul’s experi- ence. For he sees this love, this longing for the true, and thus ultimately for God, as a sort of principle of cohesion in the soul. It is what draws the soul together into unity and draws the soul into the realm of eternal reality — or rather discovers within the soul that realm of eternal reality (the higher is the more inward).
In Augustine’s analysis of the soul’s experience here, we can, I think, discern two strands. First, the love of the soul for God is the return of the image to God, and so, if God is trinitarian, it ought to be possible to discern a trinity in the soul’s experience of love. But secondly, and more importantly, the love that draws the soul into the eternal realm reveals the soul to itself as it really is: it leads the soul to true self-knowledge. The soul will only come to God through loving the image of God it Wnds in itself, if this image is a true image, the result of true self-knowledge. The Wrst step in the soul’s coming to know God will be knowledge of self: so it is that books VIII–X are concerned with the search for the true image of God in man.
It is the Wrst concern, that the soul’s love for God should disclose a trinity, that leads to the trinity of love at the end of book VIII: the trinity of the lover, the beloved, and the love that binds them together. But, though there is a certain trinity here, there is not any real unity, for lover and beloved are distinct persons:
A further ascent still remains for us, a higher realm in which our search is to be pursued, so far as men may. We have found, not the thing itself, but where it is to be sought; and that will suYce to give us a point from which a fresh start may be undertaken. (VIII.x.14)
Augustine now proceeds by looking at man himself and attempts to discern an image of the Trinity there.
Let us not speak yet of the highest, not yet of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; but of this unequal image, yet still an image, that is man; for it is familiar to us, and perhaps easier for the frailty of our mind to behold.
(IX.ii.2)
Augustine begins by considering the mind loving itself. There is now identity between the lover and the beloved, but the trinity of love has vanished, and we have only two terms: the mind and its love. Augustine, however, recalls the interpenetration of love and know- ledge: the mind cannot love itself, if it does not know itself. The trinity has now reappeared, and we have found a trinity in man himself: the trinity of mens, notitia, and amor: mind, knowledge, and love:
And in these three, when the mind knows itself and loves itself, there remains a trinity, mind, love and knowledge; and it is confused by no mingling; although each is singly in itself, and all are wholly in one another, whether one in both or both in one, and so all in all. (IX.v.8)
The way Augustine treats this image of the trinity he has now discovered in man is guided by his principle that this image will only reXect God truly, if it is a true image. And it will only be a true image if the third element of the image — self-knowledge — is genuine. If, say, the mind mistakes its own nature and thinks of itself as material, then the trinity in the soul will be imperfect. If, on the other hand, the soul thinks of itself as divine there will be a corresponding imperfection in the image. But, when the mind knows itself as it truly is, and loves itself, then there will be a genuine image in the soul. You could say (though Augustine does not put it like this directly) that a soul which fails to know itself will still manifest a trinitarian image, but a heretical one rather than an orthodox one. A mind that thinks itself material, say, will form a material idea of itself in its self- knowledge, and its self-love will be still further debased, since it will be a love of what is material. Mind, which is spiritual, whatever one thinks, will be higher than its self-knowledge or self-love, and so the trinity of mind, self-knowledge, and self-love in the soul will be subordinationist — Arian in fact.
In Book X Augustine seeks to reWne the image in the soul so that a genuinely orthodox trinity is discerned in the soul. Although self-knowledge may be very mistaken, it can never be entirely lost, 146 Augustine
for the mind is always present to itself. Self-knowledge as such, as opposed to speculation as to what mind (including my own) consists of, is certain:
Who doubts that he is alive, and remembers, and understands, and wills, and thinks, and knows and judges? If one doubts, one lives; if one doubts whether one doubts, one remembers; if one doubts, one understands that one doubts; if one doubts, it is certain that one wills to; if one doubts, one thinks; if one doubts, one knows that one does not know; if one doubts, one judges that one ought not to consent rashly. Whatever anyone doubts, he ought not to doubt these: if it were not so, it would be impossible to doubt
anything. (X.x.14)
Augustine deduces from this that the mind is spiritual, for all these spiritual properties (doubting, thinking, willing, etc.) are certain, whereas theories as to whether the mind is air or Wre or whatever are not. What is immediate to the mind are its spiritual properties: it is therefore in these spiritual properties that the trinity in the mind, the image of God, is to be sought. And Augustine Wnds it in three of these spiritual properties of which the mind is certain: memory, understanding, and will:
Now this triad of memory, understanding and will, are not three lives, but one; nor three minds, but one. It follows that they are not three substances but one substance . . . they are three inasmuch as they are related to each other . . . I remember that I possess memory and understanding and will: I understand that I understand and will and remember; I will my own willing and remembering and understanding . . . Since all are created by one another singly and as whole, the whole of each is equal to the whole of each, and the whole of each to the whole of all together. And these three constitute one thing, one life, one mind, one essence. (X.xi.18)
There is a completely co-equal trinity in the mind, each member of the trinity entirely co-penetrates the others, there is complete co-inherence. So we have arrived at the true image of God in the mind — a truly spiritual trinity, which therefore safeguards true self- knowledge in the formal sense as knowledge of the mind as a spiritual and not a material being:
We might now attempt to raise our thoughts, with such power of concen- tration as is at our disposal, towards that supreme and most exalted essence
of which the human mind is an image — inadequate indeed, but still
an image. (X.xii.19)
We have reached the end of the Wrst stage in the soul’s ascent to God: we have found the true image of God in man. The next stage now begins: the return of this image to its archetype, God. This is a process, and not simply an act: the soul must learn what it means to be the image of God in its memory, understanding, and will, and learning that, learn how to pass beyond the image to God Himself in contemplation of Him. The method Augustine pursues is a familiar one: the method of withdrawal and introversion. Augustine begins in Book XI by drawing attention to the trinity manifest in man’s perception of the external world: the thing seen, the process of seeing, and our intention of seeing. From this external trinity, in which there is a certain likeness to God, Augustine derives a more internal trinity which is manifest when the soul remembers what it has seen: a trinity of memory, internal vision, and the will that eVects this. By these considerations Augustine is seeking to bring home to the soul what it means for it to be a spiritual image of the spiritual Trinity. But how can the mind attain to a trinity that realizes its spiritual nature? Even the trinity of memory, internal vision, and will is derived from the external world and depends on it. How can the soul rise from being tied to the external world and the change and corruption bound