The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
44 Made to be Godly act of the mind when it knows and loves itself: mens, notitia sui, and amor sui.22 This trinity, however, fails for two reasons. First, mens comes off not as an equal member of the triad, but as the substrate which makes the other two operations, knowledge and love, possible.23 Second, in the act of human cognition, love unites the knower to the object known and, accordingly, love (amor or appetitus here) seems to precede knowledge—or, more significantly, the Holy Spirit would analogously seem to precede the Word.24
Augustine does not abandon his search but after examining other possible triads, he proffers the next candidate for the triune image within humanity: the mind's memory, knowledge, and love of itself.25 While this triad is an apparent improvement, in that it is equal in three mental operations requiring no adventitious object, it also fails to fulfill what is required. Why so? While the mind indeed displays a permanent triad of memory, understanding, and love, in this schema the mind fails to be open to God, and this is what essentially constitutes the divine image: "This trinity of the mind is not really the image of God because the mind remembers and understands and loves itself, but because it is also able to remember and understand and love him by whom it was made."26 That is, while the correct three faculties of memory, knowledge, and will are still directed toward a creature, they fail to meet what is required for a divine image. However, when they are opened to and in
22. Trin. 9.4.4: "Ipsa igitur mens et amor et notitia eius tria quaedam sunt, et haec tria unum sunt, et cum perfecta sunt aequalia sunt"; CCL 50.297.
23. Trin. 9.4.6; CCL 50.298. 24. Trin. 9.12.18: "Partum ergo mentis antecedit appetitus quidam quo id nosse uolumus quaerendo et inueniendo nascitur proles ipsa notitia, ac per hoc appetitus ille quo concipitur pariturque notitia partus et proles recte dici non potest. Idemque appetitus quo inhiatur rei cognoscendae fit amor cognitae dum tenet atque amplectitur placitam prolem, id est notitiam gigentique coniungit"; CCL 50.310.
25. Trin. 14.8.11: "Ecce ergo mens meminit sui, intellegit se, diligit se"; CCL 50A.436. 26. Trin. 14.12.15; Hill, Trinity, 383; "Haec igitur trinitas mentis non propterea dei est imago quia sui meminit mens et intellegit ac diligit se, sed quia potest etiam meminisse et intellegere et amare a quo facta est"; CCL 50A.442–43.