Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings
INTRODUCTION
Holy Spirit through whom the Charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, through which the Holy Trinity dwells in us.'36
The image, according to the Apostle,37 is a mirror that more or less perfectly reflects God. But inasmuch as the image is located in the intellectual acts of remembering, understanding, willing, there is no suggestion here of a material image like a picture but rather of a similar activity directed to God the Trinity under the influence of the Trinity. There will come the day of transformation unto the "same image from glory to glory, as, through the Spirit of the Lord."38 This is interpreted by Augustine to signify spiritual progress, for he says: "This is what takes place in those who are making progress steadily day by day."39 That is why he prayed: "May I remember you, understand you, and love you.
Increase these gifts in me, until you have reformed me completeby 30
Plotinus: Comparison and Contrast
It is probable that Augustine was led through the writings of the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, translated from Greek into Latin by: the Roman rhetorician Marius Victorinus, to recognize the sensible world and the human soul as the reflection of intelligible light and beauty. In Plotinian philosophy the way to the knowledge of God was by likeness to him, based on the assumption that like is known by like. If generation from the One resulted in a certain degradation or unlikeness to the One, this unlikeness was rooted in multiplicity. In the case of man, the multiplicity was not only ontological but psychological as well; man was preoccupied with the many and experienced dispersion, fragmentation, alienation. To become like the One, the soul was to strive for unity. The way to unity is to be present to mind, which by identifying itself with Nous, the second Hypostasis, is raised to the intelligible world where conversion to the One occurs. It is strictly by transcending and not only by negating thought, how-
36. I Cor 13:12; Trin. XV.18.32. Sa Con dorl2.
380 2 Cor 3:18, 39. Trin., X1V.17.23. 40. Ibid., XV.28.51.