Summary of Chapter 9: Augustine’s Trinitarian Theology in White’s book, The Trinity

Among the many contributions St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) makes to Trinitarian thought, White notes 6 key areas (I make it 5):

1. Clear distinction between eternal processions & temporal missions

Augustine makes a careful distinction between the divine persons’ temporal missions and eternal processions, distinctions that close the door to every form of Arianism and economic subordinationism. For Augustine, temporal missions, such as the Son in the Incarnation and the Spirit at Pentecost, are a revelation of their eternal processions (rather than productive of them).

“Augustine’s identification of an eternal intra-divine basis for the proceeding persons’ economic manifestation represents a significant insight into scripture and a milestone for Catholic theology” (158).

2: The Holy Spirit’s proper names in the Trinity are Gift and Love.
  • The names Gift and Love have a “mutuality” about them that suggest a reciprocal give and take.
  • Gift: Acts 8:20; Jn 4:10. The Holy Spirit is a gift given to the Church because He is first an “uncreated” Gift shared by the Father and the Son.
  • Love: Rom 5:5. The Trinity is an eternal communion of interpersonal love, which precedes all creation and is the ground of all being. No subordination. Love unites. The Holy Spirit is the eternal love that unites the Father and the Son.
  • The Holy Spirit is the basis for God’s give-ability in love ad extra, which unites us to God: the Holy Spirit “is supreme charity conjoining Father and Son to each other and subjoining us to them.”
  • The Spirit, by distinction, proceeds from the Father and the Word as Love. The similitude for the Spirit’s procession is grounded in the will. As a human being comes to know a reality and then to love that reality known, so the Father, in knowing, from all eternity generates the Word, and, in loving, from all eternity breathes forth the Spirit as an eternal expression of his love. As a result, Augustine repeatedly insists, based on New Testament revelation (John 15:26), that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Since the Holy Spirit did in the temporal mission, and temporal missions “contain” eternal processions, then He does in the eternal procession. Whatever relationship we see in the mission is a revelation of the procession.
  • The Holy Spirit is a person who is the uncreated love of Father and Son and their gift to one another.
3: “Relation” as a distinct category of predication for God (as distinct from substantial predication)
  • Augustine employs “relation terms” in a highly original way, for theological purposes, to speak of the mystery of God.
  • Each person is truly God and each person is entirely relative to the others in all that he is.
4: The doctrine of appropriation
  • The doctrine of appropriations has to do with biblical language that (1) applies a specific divine attribute to one of the divine persons seemingly exclusively (the simplicity of the divine nature notwithstanding), or (2) applies a specific divine action to one of the persons as if it were proper to him, (despite the unity of God’s action ad extra).
    • (1) Examples of attributes: we might speak in a seemingly exclusive way of “the power of the Father” or “the wisdom of the Son” or “the goodness of the Spirit.” Each of the persons is powerful, wise, and good, but a given term might be associated typically with only one of them; (2) Example of action: we might say that the Father is the Creator of the world but all three divine persons acted as one in creation.
  • Why? “Against the backdrop of the divine unity and simplicity, the appropriations highlight the characteristic way that the persons possess the divine nature, and so also, in the case of the proceeding persons, their function in the economy (i.e., the Father sends, the Word reveals, the Spirit bestows charity and unites diverse created persons by the bond of love)
  • BOTH – 3 persons of God each possess the fullness of the deity – which is itself simple & perfect. Each of the persons possesses all of the properties and actions of God equally and identically. Consequently, they cannot possess different degrees of kinds of perfection. So they all act ad extra as one.
  • AND – each of them possesses such properties and actions in a particular personal mode, as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. This is supported by his notion of “relation” as a category of predication for God.
5: 3 “new” psychological models to speak of God’s inner life.
  • 1st – Love: “Now love means someone loving and something loved with love. There you are with three, the lover, what is being loved, and love.”
    • Risk – can overlook the essential unity of the 3 persons.
  • 2nd – Psychological model: The mind, its’ self-knowledge, and corresponding love of self. Helps to show two Trinitarian processions as analogous to acts of intellect & will. The human image of God in us, expressed especially through our knowledge and love, becomes most perfect when we begin to know and love the Holy Trinity.
    • Risk – Son & Spirit can be seen as emanations of the Father.
  • 3rd – 3 mental acts: ““These three then, memory, understanding, and will, are not three lives but one life, nor three minds, but one mind. So it follows of course that they are not three substances but one substance.”
    • Risk – can obscure real distinction of persons in their inter-relational mode.