35. Trin. 8.4.6–5.8 (CCL 50:274–79); trans. McKenna, FOTC 45:250–55 (modified).
search for God. It had long been a key issue for him. As we saw, he raised it on the very first page of his Confessions. He recognized that this search for God has unique epistemological challenges because God remains an infinite and ineffable mystery. From On the Trinity, Book 8:
(4.6) We must remain in this good [that God is] and cling to it by love, that we may enjoy the presence of that from which we are, in the absence of which we would not be at all. For since "we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor 5:7), we certainly do not yet see God, as the same apostle says, "face-toface" (1 Cor 13:12). Unless we love Him now, we shall never see Him. But who loves what he does not know? For something can be known and not loved, but what I am asking is whether something can be loved that is not known. If that is impossible, then no one loves God before one knows Him. And what does it mean to love God except to see Him and to perceive Him firmly with our mind? For He is not a body to be sought for with bodily eyes. But even before we are capable of seeing and perceiving God as He can be perceived (which is granted to the clean of heart, for "blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God" [Mt 5:8]), He must be loved by faith. Otherwise, the heart cannot be cleansed so as to be fit and ready to see Him. For where are those three—faith, hope, and love—for whose building up in the soul all the divine books have been composed and work together, where else other than in the soul who believes what it does not yet see and yet hopes for and loves what it believes? Therefore, even He, who is not known but in whom one believes, is already loved. Care must, of course, be taken lest the mind, in believing what it does not see, picture to itself something that does not exist, and so hope for and love what is false. . . .
(5.8) When we, therefore, speak of and believe in the Trinity, we know what a trinity is, because we know what three are. But this is not what we love. For we can easily have a trinity whenever we wish (to pass over other things) simply by raising three fingers. Or is it that we do not love every trinity, but only what is God the Trinity? What we love in the Trinity, therefore, is that it is God. But we have not seen nor do we know of any other god, since there is only one God, that One whom we have not seen and yet whom we love by believing. But the question here is this: By what likeness or by what comparison with known things can we believe so that we may also love the notyet-known God?35
35. Trin. 8.4.6–5.8 (CCL 50:274–79); trans. McKenna, FOTC 45:250–55 (modified).