Augustine and the Trinity by Lewis Ayres (review)

617 BOOK REVIEWS Augustine and the Trinity. By LEWIS AYRES. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. 374. $83.00 (cloth) ISBN: 978-0-521-83886-3. The older reading of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology as primarily philosophical, static, and monistic continues to crumble as scholars such as Lewis Ayres and Michel Barnes make clear that it is much more dynamic, scriptural, and ecclesial in character. With his recent book, Augustine and the Trinity, Ayres provides scholars of early Christian thought with an important work that will serve as a basic point of orientation for anyone venturing onto this difficult theological terrain. Ayres, on his own account, does not intend the book to be an exhaustive treatment of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology or a focused, in-depth commentary on Augustine’s De Trinitate, but he offers rather a complex and challenging overview of the development of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology against the backdrop of its historical intellectual context. To that end, Ayres’s exposition links two thematic foci: (1) the distinctive character of Augustine’s mature account of the unity of the divine three, in which the principles of divine simplicity and immutability enable him to argue that the Son’s and Spirit’s being from the Father paradoxically ground their substantial identity with him; and (2) the organic relation of theological reflection and Christian life in Augustine’s Trinitarian vision, according to which the analysis of the human mind as an “analogy” of the triune God enables ascent precisely inasmuch as it illustrates just how different God is from his creation—a process whereby the believer is drawn out of him or herself and grows in humility and love within the communal body of Christ. The book is divided into four parts comprising a total of twelve chapters. Part 1 explores the sources and themes of Augustine’s earliest Trinitarian theology. In chapter 1 Ayres treats the Trinitarian theology found in Augustine’s earliest writings of 386-87, showing that his adoption of Neoplatonic themes is less thoroughgoing than the scholar Olivier du Roy would have it and is at many points conditioned by Augustine’s likely reading of the Latin pro-Nicene theologians Ambrose and Marius Victorinus. The second chapter begins with an exposition of the basic principles of Latin pro-Nicene Trinitarian theology: the substantial unity of Father, Son, and Spirit as well as their inseparable, common operations. Ayres shows how these pro-Nicene principles inform Augustine’s writings from 388 to 391, which are marked by an anti-Manichean agenda. In particular, the pro-Nicene doctrine of the inseparable operation of the divine three in the act of creation enables Augustine to counter Manichean denigration of creation. Augustine links the economies of creation and salvation conceptually—the same triune God who gives form and order to the world then reforms and reorders the 618 BOOK REVIEWS fallen soul—thereby anticipating his later use of creation and especially the human mens as analogical loci for reflection on the Trinity in se. Ayres devotes the third chapter to further situating Augustine’s early thought within the longer tradition of Latin Trinitarian theology, in this case, anti-modalist arguments that frequently date back as far as Tertullian but by Augustine’s time had been reintegrated into an interpretive framework supportive of Nicene orthodoxy. In this chapter, Ayres aims to elucidate the overlooked historical context of such technical theological terms as persona, natura, and substantia, the proper understanding of which must take into account anti-modalist arguments that emphasize the irreducible distinction between the Father, Son, and Spirit. Chapter 4 marks the beginning of part 2, which investigates the relationship between belief and understanding in Augustine’s theology in the first fifteen or so years of the fifth century. Through a particular focus on the first book of De Trinitate, Ayres illustrates how, in the process of explaining what is to be believed, Augustine employs classical forensic rhetoric and dialectic to interpret Scripture through the lens of Nicene faith. In chapter 5, Ayres follows Augustine in the movement towards understanding. In so doing, Ayres first looks at Plotinus and the latter’s twofold understanding of ascent to intellectual vision of the...