Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
chapter 8
Augustine the Theologian
On the Trinity
Theology literally means "speaking of God." For Augustine and his age, the great theological issue was how to speak rightly about "the Trinity who God is."1 His classic exposition appears in the fifteen books of On the Trinity (De Trinitate), a work nearly as influential as Confessions. He worked on it, off and on, for two decades, roughly from 400 to 422.2 As he told Aurelius of Carthage, "I began the work . . . as a young man; I finished it as an old one."3 He did not imagine that such a demanding work would be widely read. When his old friend Evodius, bishop of Uzalis, asked about the project, Augustine said that other writings were getting his best energies because they seemed "more pressing" and "useful to more people" while his still-incomplete exposition on the Trinity was "too exacting a work" and "comprehensible to few."4 Only after the unfinished manuscript had been published without his permission did he finally complete, revise, and publish it (for more on this theft, see below).
The issue of Trinity was a tumultuous one and had been so for a century. Controversy began in Alexandria, Egypt, about 318 when Arius (d. 336), a presbyter and popular pastor, clashed with his bishop, Alexander (d. 328).5 The point of contention touched—and continues to touch—the heart of the
1. Trinitate quae Deus est: a favorite Augustinian locution: Trin. 1.4.7; 15.6.10; 15.17.28; cf. 8.5.8 (Trinitate quod Deus est). For a comprehensive study of Augustine's theology of God, see Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Other key sources are listed in the "Suggestions for Further Reading."
2. On the complexities of the dating of this work, see Hombert, Nouvelles recherches, 45–80. 3. Ep. 174 (CSEL 44:650); my trans. 4. Ep. 169 (CSEL 44:612); trans. Parsons, FOTC 30:51. 5. The scholarly literature on this controversy is vast. For a comprehensive study, see R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 AD (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988); see