Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
On the Trinity 313 father and from the mother. When a son proceeds from the father into the mother, he does not proceed from the mother; and when he proceeds into the light of day from the mother, he does not then proceed from the father. But the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father into the Son, and from the Son proceed to sanctifying the creature. He proceeds from each at the same time, although the Father has given this to the Son: that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Him just as He does as from Himself. For we cannot say that the Holy Spirit is not life when the Father is life, when the Son is life. And for this reason, just as the Father, who has life in Himself, has given also to the Son to have life in Himself, so too He has given to the Son that life proceed from Him as it also proceeds from Himself.52
"Seek His Face Always"
In the prologue to Book 15, Augustine returns to Ps 104:4: "Seek his face always." Here Augustine makes clear the deeper intent of On the Trinity. As Robert Wilken has noted, "what Augustine is seeking is not a theological concept or an explanation as such, but the living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. . . . [This] means more than simply getting things straight or discovering the most appropriate analogy in human experience for the Triune God. There can be no finding without a change in the seeker. Our minds, he says, must be purified, and we must be made fit and capable of receiving what is sought."53 From On the Trinity, Book 15:
(2.2) The very God we are seeking will, I hope, grant us His help so that our labor may not be without some fruit and that we may understand why it says in the sacred Psalm: "Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Seek the Lord, and be strengthened. Seek His face always" (Ps 104:3–4). Now it seems that what is searched for always is never found. In that case, how will the heart of those who seek rejoice rather than be saddened if they cannot find what they are searching for? For the Psalm does not say: "Let the heart of those who find the Lord rejoice," but rather "those who seek the Lord." And yet the Lord God can be found even while He is being searched for, as the Prophet Isaiah testifies when he says: "Seek the Lord, and as soon as you find Him, call upon Him; and when He draws near to you, let the wicked forsake their ways, and the unjust their thoughts" (Is 55:6–7). If, therefore, He who is searched for can be found, why does the Psalm say: "Seek His face always"
52. Jo. ev. tr. 99.7–9 (BA 74B:362–68); trans. Rettig, FOTC 90:226–28 (modified). Augustine quotes this passage in De Trinitate 15.27.48 (CCL 50A:529–30). On the Filioque, see Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 358–67.
53. Wilken, Spirit of Early Christian Thought, 106–7.