Augustine’s Careful Method

I’m just finishing books XI-XV, the culmination of Augustine’s On the Trinity. I had in mind some things to say in today’s post, but then, just now, I read what I wrote three years ago on this blog about books VI-X, and my plan for today’s post almost completely changed. For one thing, I think I did a pretty good job in 2021, and I’m glad I don’t have to say anything more today about things like semiotics, which I had originally planned to do.

(OK, I’ll say one thing about semiotics. Augustine’s various triads – thing in the world, image of that thing in our eyes, attention that trains the eye on the thing, for instance – and his explanation of the way a sign becomes the signified in a chain – thing in the world, image in the eye of the thing, memory of the image in the eye, present imagination of the memory, thought about the image in the mind’s eye, judgment of that thought, etc. – reminded me a lot of Charles Peirce. But I recently read my notes on my notes about Peirce (yes, another chain of signs) which said that the system was so complex, I couldn’t make sense of my notes. So I’m relieved that I don’t have to go back and try to figure out Peirce just to write something today about Augustine. So now you know why the one thing I want to say about semiotics explains why I don’t want to say anything about semiotics.)

Back to the main thread now. The most interesting thing to me now about my post from three years ago is that I said then that I didn’t buy Augustine’s answer to his question, How can we love the Trinity without understanding the Trinity? I had completely forgotten my dissatisfaction. In the last five books, Augustine methodically moves step by step toward explaining his answer, and, not remembering that he had already given his answer in a previous book, I found it reasonable this time. The prose is dense and difficult to read, even for a guy who likes to read old books. But sometimes methodical explanations require dense prose, and clearly that density is effective, since, having slogged through it, I understand Augustine’s point now, when I didn’t buy it three years ago after he had merely stated it.

Here is Augustine’s point. The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God is in three Persons but one Substance: a mindbender, to be sure. But we are to love God, and how can we love anyone or anything we don’t understand? Well, we love other things that we don’t know yet because we see cause to assume a likeness to something that we do know and love. “If your brother is anything like you, I’m sure we’ll be great friends.” So surely we must be able to love the divine Trinity because we know and love something like a trinity that exists in the created world, and the trinity that we know and love is in the mind knowing itself: there we have the mind as known, the mind as knower, and the mind as will that focuses the attention on itself. The three aspects (it is difficult to decide on the noun to use) correspond to the three faculties of the mind: memory, understanding, and will. And all three, while distinct in concept, lie in the one substance of the mind.

Now that’s not just the answer: it is the answer as well as an explanation for it of sorts. But that answer, for me anyway, isn’t really persuasive until one reads Augustine’s careful search through all other possible analogous trinities and his account of the reasons they don’t work.

Reading is such an adventure! I had no idea of the story that would unfold when, ten years ago, I decided to scatter the books of On the Trinity through my ten-year plan and to devote the intervening years to other works by Augustine. Reading can be hard. It’s difficult to find the time, and it gets harder and harder for me to focus with my failing eyes and my wandering attention. But learning feels good, and that’s one reason I do it and a big reason I do it by a geeky, embarrassing schedule.