The Trinity

Introduction

INTRODUCTION nIlE TRINITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE cannot compare in popularity with his Confessions or the City of God. Yet 233 manuscripts of it have been found, dating from the ninth to the fifteenth century.1 This is a rather surprising number in view of the subjects treated in the fifteen books, which even the saint himself thought few would understand.2 Unfortunately the work has not yet been edited critically as have some of his other writings, though the discrepancies in the Migne text do not appear to be of a substantial nature. A Greek translation was made about the year 1350. This was not only a rare tribute to the work of a Latin writer, but was, in all probability, the first time the De Trinitate was translated .a St. Augustine gives us some interesting facts about this work in a letter to his friend, Bishop Aurelius of Carthage. 'I began the books on the Trinity as a young man,' he says, 'but published them as an old man:4 Young and old are rather indefinite terms, but it is commonly agreed that he started the work about the year 400 and finished it in 416.5 There are many reasons for so long a delay. Two of the most important 1 A. Wilmart, 'La Tradition des grandes ouvrages de S. Augustin,' Miscel· lanea Agostiniana 2 (Rome 1931) 269-278. 2 'Nimis operosi stint, et a paucis intelligi posse arbitror.' Ep. 169, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (hereafter cited as CSEL) 44.613. 3 L. Arias, 'Tratado sobre la Santisima Trinidad,' Obras de San Agustin 5 Bibliotheca de Autores Cristianos (Madrid 1948) 108. 4 'De Trinitate libros iuvenis inchoavi, senex edidi.' Ep. 174, CSEL 44.650. 5 V. Bourke, Augustine's Quest of Wisdom (Milwaukee 1945) 202, 304. vii viii SAINT AUGUSTINE were the struggle with the Donatists, the scourge of the Church in Africa during those years,6 and his own ill-health which forced him to leave Hippo for a time.7 Augustine's original intention was to complete the fifteen books, check them carefully, and only then have them put into circulation. But, as he tells us in the letter referred to above, some friends surreptitiously obtained a copy while he was still working on the twelfth book, and had it distributed without his permission. The saint was so annoyed at their action that he discontinued the writing altogether, and only resolved to complete what he had started at the earnest request of Aurelius and some others. 'I took care to finish the laborious treatise, with the help of God, correcting the books, not as well as I wished but as well as I could, lest too great a discrepancy develop in the revised version from those which were first taken from me.' In his Retractations he calls attention to only two passages of minor importance that he wished to have changed.s His other dogmatic writings were usually of a polemical nature, and were directed against the Donatists, the Pelagians, and the Manicheans, who were actually propagating their errors among the Catholic people. But as far as we can judge from the existing evidence, no concerted attack was being made at that time against the doctrine of the Trinity. 1£ there had been he would hardly have spent sixteen years in composing a refutation. As a matter of fact he had probably not come in contact with the Arians since his early days at Milan, and his famous debate with Maximinus, the Bishop of this sect, took place in 428, only two years before his death.9 There were indeed the 'garrulous disputants,'10 as he calls those who regarded reason alone as the sole criterion of all truth, but 6 See the saint's letter about the disorders in Carthage caused by the Donatists, Ep. 118, CSEL 34.643. 7 Ep. 118, CSEL 34.665. 8 Book II, 15 (PL 32.635-636). 9 Collatio cum Maximino (PL 42.709-742). 10 De Trinitate 1.2.4. INTRODUCTION ix they seem to have been neither numerous nor influential. His main reason, then, for writing on the Trinity was probably to strengthen the faith of his fellow-Catholics in the greatest of the mysteries, the one upon which all dogmas depend, and to which they also ultimately lead. But the saint, who is represented in Christian art as holding a heart on fire, could...