Theology of Augustine of Hippo," Augustinian Studies 7 (1976): 140. (continued)
140 The Holy Spirit's Indwelling based on the pattern of the Trinity's interpersonal relations. The work the divine persons perform economically provides a faint hint of their eternity. We saw this at play when we examined the role of each divine person in the act of creation back in chapter 2. Now this principle again becomes essential because we can expect to see that what the Holy Spirit accomplishes in human persons indicates how the Spirit lives in the Trinity.
Given this intricate and complementary blending of images and roles, there has been surprisingly little appreciation of how Augustine understands the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation. Most scholars have chosen instead to concentrate on his groundbreaking insight into the Holy Spirit as the personal love between Father and Son, hence failing to account thoroughly for what the Holy Spirit achieves in history. Two recent comments indicate how scholars view the way in which the Holy Spirit plays some role in Augustine's understanding of humanity's participation in God, but see it as a mitigated and less-studied role when juxtaposed with the East. For example, Patricia Wilson-Kastner concluded that, "The Greek Fathers also formulated a crucial aspect of human participation in the divine life which is present in a lesser way in Augustine—the role of the Holy Spirit."16 Likewise, in his fine comparison between Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria, Daniel Keating concludes that when attention is turned "to Augustine's depiction of the Spirit's role in our appropriation of divine life, it appears—on a first reading—that Augustine's account is somewhat underdeveloped in comparison to Cyril's."17 Let us, mundaremur ad contemplandam ueritatem in rebus ortis ab aeternitate prolatis et ad aeternitatem relatis temporaliter gesta sunt aut testimonia missionis huius fuerunt aut ipsa missio filii dei"; CCL 50.193.
16. Patricia Wilson-Kastner, "Grace as Participation in the Divine Life in the Theology of Augustine of Hippo," Augustinian Studies 7 (1976): 140.
17. Daniel Keating, The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 244.