The reader of this treatise on the Trinity should know beforehand that our pen is on the watch for the sophistries of those who consider it beneath their dignity to begin with faith, and who thus are led into error by their immature and perverted love of reason. Some of them attempt to transfer the ideas of corporeal things, which they have experienced through their bodily senses, or have grasped by their native human ingenuity and assiduous application, or by the help of art, to incorporeal and spiritual substances so as to measure and explain the latter by the former....

When men seek after god and direct their mind to the understanding of the Trinity, according to the capacity of human weakness, they learn by experience of the wearisome difficulties that this requires, whether from the eye of the mind trying to look into the inaccessible light, or from the manifold and various modes of speech in the sacred books (where our soul, it seems to me, is only being sorely tried in order that it may find sweetness after it has been glorified by the grace of Christ); when these men have removed all ambiguity, and have arrived at...

Let those, who will, believe me: I would rather apply myself to reading than to dictating what others are to read. But let those, who will not believe but are able and willing to make the trial, at least grant me whatever answers I have gathered by reading, either to my own inquiries or to the questions of others. For, I must submit to such questions because of the character which I bear in the service of Christ, and the zeal with which I am inflamed, that our faith may be defended against carnal and sensual men; and then let...

Men are wont to set a high value on the knowledge of earthly and celestial things. But they are certainly better who prefer the knowledge of themselves to this knowledge; and a mind to which even its own weakness is known, is more deserving of praise than one which, knowing nothing of this, searches out the courses of the stars in order to learn to know them, or to retain the knowledge of them it has already acquired, but is itself ignorant of the course by which it must proceed to reach its own true health and strength. But he...

From now on i begin to speak of subjects, which are altogether above the power of any man, or at least of myself, to express in words as they are conceived in the mind; even our thinking itself, when we reflect on God the Trinity, is conscious of the distance between itself and Him of whom it is thinking; it is unable to comprehend Him as He is, but He is seen, as it is written, even by such a great man as Paul the Apostle ‘through a mirror, and in an enigma.’¹ Therefore, I will first call upon the...

Some think that they are hindered from accepting the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, because it was written: ‘Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God,’¹ so that it would, therefore, seem as if there is not an equality, because the Father Himself is not the power and the wisdom, but the begetter of power and wisdom. And, in truth, the question is usually asked, with no little anxiety, in what sense can God be called the Father of power and wisdom, for the Apostle calls Christ: ‘the power of God and the...

Let us now examine more carefully, insofar as God grants, the question that we deferred a little while ago: whether each of the persons in the Trinity by Himself and without the other two can also be called God, great, wise, true, omnipotent, just, or anything else that can be said about God, not relatively, but in respect to Himself; or whether these terms may not be employed except when the Trinity itself is understood.

This question arose because it was written: ‘Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God’;¹ whether He is so the Father of His...

In this trinity, as we have said elsewhere, those names, which are predicated relatively the one to the other, are properly spoken of as belonging to each person in particular, as Father and Son, and the Gift of both, the Holy Spirit; for the Father is not the Trinity, nor the Son the Trinity, nor the Gift the Trinity. But when they are spoken of singly with respect to themselves, then they are not spoken of as three in the plural number but as one, the Trinity itself. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit...

We are indeed seeking a trinity, but not any trinity at all, but that Trinity which is God, and the true, the supreme, and the only God. Keep waiting, therefore, whoever you are, who hear these words. For we are still seeking, and no one rightly blames him for engaging in such a search, provided only that he remain firmly-rooted in the faith, while he seeks that which it is so difficult to know or to express.

But he who sees or teaches better, may quickly and justiy find fault with him who speaks positively concerning it. ‘Seek God,’ he...

Let us now proceed in an orderly fashion, with a more exact purpose, to explain these same questions more thoroughly. First of all, since no one can in any way love a thing that is wholly unknown, we must carefully examine of what sort is the love of those who study, that is, of those who do not yet know a branch of knowledge, but are eager to learn it. For even in those things to which the term study is not generally applied, love often arises by simply hearing about them. Thus our mind yearns to see and to...

No one doubts that, as the inner man is endowed with understanding, so the outer man is endowed with the sense of the body. Let us endeavor, therefore, to discover, if we can, any trace at all of the Trinity even in this outer man, not that he himself is also in the same way the image of God. For the teaching of the Apostle is clear, where he says that the inner man is being renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of Him who created him;¹ and when he also says in another place: ‘Even...

Well now! Let us see where the boundary line, as it were, between the outer and the inner man is to be placed. For it is correctly said, that whatever we have in our soul, in common with the beasts, pertains to the outer man, since by the outer man we mean not the body alone, but also its own peculiar kind of life, whence the structure of the body and all the senses derive their vigor, and by which they are equipped to perceive external things. And we are still concerned with something pertaining to the outer man when...

In the preceding book of this work—the twelfth—we were busily occupied in distinguishing the function of the rational mind in temporal things, where not only our knowledge, but also our action are called into play, from the more excellent function of this same mind which is employed in the contemplation of eternal things, and has its final goal in knowledge alone. But I think it more proper that I insert some passages from the Sacred Scriptures, whereby both can be kept apart more easily.

(2) John the Evangelist thus begins his Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word,...

We are now to treat of wisdom, which is undoubtedly God—for His only-begotten Son is called the Wisdom of God¹—but we shall speak about the wisdom of man, yet of true wisdom which is according to God, and is the true and principal worship of Him; in Greek it is called by one word theosébia. Since our writers also wished to interpret this word by a single term, as we have already mentioned, they called it piety, pietas, while among the Greeks the more usual name for piety was eusébia; but because theosébia cannot be perfectly translated by...

Desiring to train the reader in the things that were made, in order that he might know Him by whom they were made, we have now at last arrived at His image which is man, in that whereby He is superior to other animals, namely, in reason and understanding, and whatever else can be said of the rational or intellectual soul that pertains to that thing which is called the mind or animus. Some Latin authors, according to their own peculiar manner of speech, called animus that which excels in man and is not in the beast, thus distinguishing it...