Chapter 381 (continued)
padocians shared Athanasius's commitment to Christ's divinity (though they typically framed their defense as a rebuttal of the anti-Nicene extremist Eunomius of Cyzicus). The Cappadocians' originality came from the way they defended the Spirit's divinity and formulated the classic doctrine of the Trinity. The Cappadocian formula is that God is "three persons (hypostaseis) in one essence (ousia)." This, in time, became the ecumenical standard for Christian orthodoxy. Cappadocian views on the Spirit received formal ratification in 381, in the Creed of the Council of Constantinople which acclaimed that "we believe . . . in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is together worshiped and together glorified. . . ."19 Christians today recite these words in liturgy, thinking they are reciting the Nicene Creed. They are not. Nicaea had been silent on the Spirit's status. Today's "Nicene Creed" is, in fact, the Cappadocian-inspired Creed of Constantinople.
Augustine never mastered Greek—at least, not to a level at which he could read Greek theological texts. This meant he did not know the writings of Athanasius or the Cappadocians at first hand. When Augustine converted to orthodox Christianity in the mid-380s, Ambrose symbolized and defined for him what orthodoxy meant. Ambrose, however, did read Greek and passed on insights and formulations from the Cappadocians—obvious in his treatises On the Faith and On the Holy Spirit. Augustine would, in later years, draw not only on Ambrose's works, but also those of Marius Victorinus and of Hilary of Poitiers (d. c. 368).
This complex background—complex both historically and theologically—serves as the starting point for Augustine's own quite original work as a theologian. In the excerpts that follow, I will draw mostly from his On the Trinity. But I open with earlier samplings to give a glimpse of the way that he worked out his views gradually and offered different elements to different audiences.
and Biblical Truth (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007); Christopher A. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
19. Council of Constantinople, Creed (Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Professions, 1:162–63). For analysis, see Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 296–357; Hanson, Search, 812–20; Ayres, Nicaea, 253–60.
On the Trinity 279
Trinity and Incarnation:
First Explorations
Augustine's friend Nebridius had long been a provocative thinker and questioner. His challenges had helped Augustine see deep philosophic flaws in Manicheism. Around 389, when Augustine was settling into his monastic experiment in Thagaste, Nebridius wrote and asked how it could be that the Trinity always acted as one and yet only God the Son became human. Here we see Augustine trying to sketch a solution from a pro Nicene perspective for how the three Persons of the Trinity always work inseparably, how they form a single power and a single activity. As in others of his early, philosophically inclined works, the argumentation here can be dense (not unlike a mathematical proof ). From Letter 11:
(2) Here, then, is what I think about [God's] mystical assumption of the human being,20 [a doctrine] that the religion in which we are both steeped proposes to us for the sake of our salvation as something we are to believe and to know. I have selected this question, not as the easiest of all, or the one I am best able to answer, but as the one that seemed to me more worthy than others of thought and attention. For the other questions are matters about this world and seem to me to have no bearing on the achievement of happiness. Even if it gives us pleasure to search into them, we ought to be concerned that the time spent on them should really be devoted to better things. Therefore, in regard to this present question of God assuming [a human being], I am surprised, in the first place, at your finding it hard to understand why the Son—and not the Father or even the Holy Spirit—is said to have become human. For the Catholic faith commends and believes—and even a few holy and blessed ones understand—that the Trinity is so inseparable that whatever action the Trinity performs must be performed at the same time by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Spirit. The Father does not do anything that the Son and the Holy Spirit do not also do; nor does the Holy Spirit do anything that the Father and the Son do not do; nor does the Son do anything that the Father and the Holy Spirit do not do. From this it would seem to follow that the whole Trinity became human, for if the Son assumed the human being, and the Father and the Holy Spirit did not, They would be acting in some way other than mutually. Why, then, in our mysteries and our sacred rites is the assuming of the human being celebrated as if [only] attributable to the Son? This is a very deep question and so difficult and of such great import that it cannot be solved in a sentence, nor can its proof be wholly satis-
20. "Mystical assumption of the human being" (de susceptione hominis mystica): Augustine's early locution for speaking of "the mystery of the Incarnation."
fying. Nevertheless, when I write anything to you, I venture to outline rather than to develop what is in my mind, leaving you to work it out for yourself, according to your own gifts of mind.
(3) There is no nature, Nebridius, and certainly no substance, which does not possess and behave with these three characteristics: first, that it exists; second, that it is a "this" or a "that"; third, that it continues to be what it is as far as possible. The first shows us the very cause of nature from which all things exist. The second shows us the species in which all things are fashioned and in some way formed. The third shows a certain permanence [of identity] in which, as one might say, all things exist. But if it were possible: that something exists that is not a "this" or a "that," nor that it maintains its genus; or that it is a "this" or a "that," but does not exist nor maintain its genus as far as possible; or that it maintains its genus according to the strengths of its genus, but still neither exists nor is a "this" or a "that"; if that really were possible, then it could happen that in that Trinity one of the Persons could do something without the others. But if you discern that it necessarily follows that whatever exists must simultaneously be a "this" or a "that" and must maintain its own genus as far as possible, then those Three do nothing outside of what They do mutually. I see that I have thus far treated the part of this question whose solution is difficult. But I wanted to show you briefly (at least, if I did what I wanted to do) what subtlety is needed to deal with the inseparability of the Trinity—and with what depth of truth it is understood in the Catholic world.
(4) Now think about this as a possible way that what troubles your mind might not be so troubling. The characteristic attributed properly to the Son refers to a discipline of life and to a certain "artistry"—if we can legitimately use such vocabulary about these issues—and also to the understanding by which the mind itself is formed in its thinking about things. Therefore, since [God's] assuming a human being has brought it about that a certain discipline of living and example of precept has been conveyed to us under the majesty and clarity of His teachings, it is not without reason that all this is attributed to the Son. For in many issues, which I leave to your thoughtful and prudent consideration, though many truths are implied, one stands out and rightly demands special notice. For in those three types of questions, even if one were to probe whether something exists, there is implied also the question of what it is, for it certainly cannot exist unless it is a something. Likewise, there is implied the question whether we approve or disapprove, for whatever something is, it deserves some estimate of its worth. So when one probes what it is, it necessarily implies both that it exists and that it is weighed by some estimate of its worth. In this way as well, when one probes