The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
Creation as the Unifying Prologue 9
Even though Augustine's taxonomy varies throughout his writing, he consistently sees how every creature displays three distinct factors. In this passage from De Vera Religione we see how every creature (1) is one thing [unum aliquid sit], (2) is a particular kind of something [species propria], and (3) strives to remain in its proper ordering [ordinem non excedat]. Later on, these created triads would be indiscriminately described as esse, essentia, manentia.23 Augustine also calls these triads mensura, numerus, and pondus.24 At other times he presents them as mensura, numerus, modus,25 modus, species, ordo.26 Or, finally, they are called unitas, species, and ordo.27 While the terms may differ, Augustine is consistent in expressing how (1) the first term of each of these triads is always a capacity or "measure" of existence, (2) the second term is a certain reason or formed beauty, and (3) the third represents an existent's importance or place within the divine arrangement of things.28
May we simply attribute these three effects to each person of the Trinity respectively? Picking up on St. Paul's counsel to find the invisible God in his visible creation, Augustine advises that we should know the creator by understanding the things that are made (Rom. 1:20) and to understand him as triune [trinitatem], as traces [uestigium] of this Trinity appear fitting-
23. Cf. ep. 11.3. 24. Cf. conf. 5.4.7; Trin. 3.9.18. Note also the triad of esse, nosse, uelle at conf. 13.11.12 when Augustine turns explicitly to the creation of the human mind; CCL 27.247.
25. Cf. Gn. litt.4.3. 26. Cf. ciu. Dei 11.15; c. Faust. 21.6. 27. Trin. 6.10.12. For more on these triads, see the tables at TeSelle, Augustine The Theologian, 120–21.
28. James O'Donnell raises many possible sources for this triadic structuring. He first enlists Willi Theiler's conjecture that it comes from the Neoplatonic ousia, eidos, and taxis [cf. Willi Theiler, Porphyrios und Augustin (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1933), 11–12, 32–34]; but then also admits that Olivier du Roy has a "careful refutation" of this position [cf. Olivier du Roy, L'Intelligence de la foi en la Trinité selon saint Augustin (Paris: Études augustinnienes, 1966), 402–08]. O'Donnell next states that this triad has "evident connections" with the opening of Ambrose's Hexameron where the Bishop of Milan acknowledges an Aristotelian influence (cf. Hexameron, dies primus 1.1; CSEL 32.1), Augustine: Confessions II: Commentary, 48.