On the Trinity
Augustine of Hippo (354–430)
First published 428
Augustine's De Trinitate, staged here in the public-domain NPNF English translation by Arthur West Haddan, revised by W. G. T. Shedd.
Book 1
Caput I: This Work is Written Against Those Who Sophistically Assail the Faith of the Trinity, Through Misuse of Reason. They Who Dispute Concerning God Err from a Threefold Cause. Holy Scripture, Removing What is False, Leads Us on by Degrees to Things Divine. What True Immortality is. We are Nourished by Faith, that We May Be Enabled to Apprehend Things Divine.
Caput II: In What Manner This Work Proposes to Discourse Concerning the Trinity.
Caput III: What Augustin Requests from His Readers. The Errors of Readers Dull of Comprehension Not to Be Ascribed to the Author.
Caput IV: What the Doctrine of the Catholic Faith is Concerning the Trinity.
Caput V: Of Difficulties Concerning the Trinity: in What Manner Three are One God, and How, Working Indivisibly, They Yet Perform Some Things Severally.
Caput VI: That the Son is Very God, of the Same Substance with the Father. Not Only the Father, But the Trinity, is Affirmed to Be Immortal. All Things are Not from the Father Alone, But Also from the Son. That the Holy Spirit is Very God, Equal with the Father and the Son.
Caput VII: In What Manner the Son is Less Than the Father, and Than Himself.
Caput VIII: The Texts of Scripture Explained Respecting the Subjection of the Son to the Father, Which Have Been Misunderstood. Christ Will Not So Give Up the Kingdom to the Father, as to Take It Away from Himself. The Beholding Him is the Promised End of All Actions. The Holy Spirit is Sufficient to Our Blessedness Equally with the Father.
Caput IX: All are Sometimes Understood in One Person.
Caput X: In What Manner Christ Shall Deliver Up the Kingdom to God, Even the Father. The Kingdom Having Been Delivered to God, Even the Father, Christ Will Not Then Make Intercession for Us.
Caput XI: By What Rule in the Scriptures It is Understood that the Son is Now Equal and Now Less.
Caput XII: In What Manner the Son is Said Not to Know the Day and the Hour Which the Father Knows. Some Things Said of Christ According to the Form of God, Other Things According to the Form of a Servant. In What Way It is of Christ to Give the Kingdom, in What Not of Christ. Christ Will Both Judge and Not Judge.
Caput XIII: Diverse Things are Spoken Concerning the Same Christ, on Account of the Diverse Natures of the One Hypostasis [Theanthropic Person]. Why It is Said that the Father Will Not Judge, But Has Given Judgment to the Son.
Book 2
Caput I: Preface
Caput I: There is a Double Rule for Understanding the Scriptural Modes of Speech Concerning the Son of God. These Modes of Speech are of a Threefold Kind.
Caput II: That Some Ways of Speaking Concerning the Son are to Be Understood According to Either Rule.
Caput III: Some Things Concerning the Holy Spirit are to Be Understood According to the One Rule Only.
Caput IV: The Glorification of the Son by the Father Does Not Prove Inequality.
Caput V: The Son and Holy Spirit are Not Therefore Less Because Sent. The Son is Sent Also by Himself. Of the Sending of the Holy Spirit.
Caput VI: The Creature is Not So Taken by the Holy Spirit as Flesh is by the Word.
Caput VII: A Doubt Raised About Divine Appearances.
Caput VIII: The Entire Trinity Invisible.
Caput IX: Against Those Who Believed the Father Only to Be Immortal and Invisible. The Truth to Be Sought by Peaceful Study.
Caput X: Whether God the Trinity Indiscriminately Appeared to the Fathers, or Any One Person of the Trinity. The Appearing of God to Adam. Of the Same Appearance. The Vision to Abraham.
Caput XI: Of the Same Appearance.
Caput XII: The Appearance to Lot is Examined.
Caput XIII: The Appearance in the Bush.
Caput XIV: Of the Appearance in the Pillar of Cloud and of Fire.
Caput XV: Of the Appearance on Sinai. Whether the Trinity Spake in that Appearance or Some One Person Specially.
Caput XVI: In What Manner Moses Saw God.
Caput XVII: How the Back Parts of God Were Seen. The Faith of the Resurrection of Christ. The Catholic Church Only is the Place from Whence the Back Parts of God are Seen. The Back Parts of God Were Seen by the Israelites. It is a Rash Opinion to Think that God the Father Only Was Never Seen by the Fathers.
Caput XVIII: The Vision of Daniel.
Book 3
Caput I: Preface
Caput I: What is to Be Said Thereupon.
Caput II: The Will of God is the Higher Cause of All Corporeal Change. This is Shown by an Example.
Caput III: Of the Same Argument.
Caput IV: God Uses All Creatures as He Will, and Makes Visible Things for the Manifestation of Himself.
Caput V: Why Miracles are Not Usual Works.
Caput VI: Diversity Alone Makes a Miracle.
Caput VII: Great Miracles Wrought by Magic Arts.
Caput VIII: God Alone Creates Those Things Which are Changed by Magic Art.
Caput IX: The Original Cause of All Things is from God.
Caput X: In How Many Ways the Creature is to Be Taken by Way of Sign. The Eucharist.
Caput XI: The Essence of God Never Appeared in Itself. Divine Appearances to the Fathers Wrought by the Ministry of Angels. An Objection Drawn from the Mode of Speech Removed. That the Appearing of God to Abraham Himself, Just as that to Moses, Was Wrought by Angels. The Same Thing is Proved by the Law Being Given to Moses by Angels. What Has Been Said in This Book, and What Remains to Be Said in the Next.
Book 4
Caput I: Preface
Caput I: We are Made Perfect by Acknowledgement of Our Own Weakness. The Incarnate Word Dispels Our Darkness.
Caput II: How We are Rendered Apt for the Perception of Truth Through the Incarnate Word.
Caput III: The One Death and Resurrection of The Body of Christ Harmonizes with Our Double Death and Resurrection of Body and Soul, to the Effect of Salvation. In What Way the Single Death of Christ is Bestowed Upon Our Double Death.
Caput IV: The Ratio of the Single to the Double Comes from the Perfection of the Senary Number. The Perfection of The Senary Number is Commended in the Scriptures. The Year Abounds in The Senary Number.
Caput V: The Number Six is Also Commended in the Building Up of the Body of Christ and of the Temple at Jerusalem.
Caput VI: The Three Days of the Resurrection, in Which Also the Ratio of Single to Double is Apparent.
- Scripture again witnesses that the space of those three days themselves was not whole and entire, but the first day is counted as a whole from its last part, and the third day is itself also counted as a whole from its first part; but the intervening day, i.e. the second day, was absolutely a whole with its twenty-four hours, twelve of the day and twelve of the night. For He was crucified first by the voices of the Jews in the third hour, when it was the sixth day of the week. Then He hung on the cross itself at the sixth hour, and yielded up His spirit at the ninth hour. But He was buried, “now when the even was come,” as the words of the evangelist express it; which means, at the end of the day. Wheresoever then you begin,—even if some other explanation can be given, so as not to contradict the Gospel of John, but to understand that He was suspended on the cross at the third hour,—still you cannot make the first day an entire day. It will be reckoned then an entire day from its last part, as the third from its first part. For the night up to the dawn, when the resurrection of the Lord was made known, belongs to the third day; because God (who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, that through the grace of the New Testament and the partaking of the resurrection of Christ the words might be spoken to us “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord”) intimates to us in some way that the day takes its beginning from the night. For as the first days of all were reckoned from light to night, on account of the future fall of man; so these on account of the restoration of man, are reckoned from darkness to light. From the hour, then, of His death to the dawn of the resurrection are forty hours, counting in also the ninth hour itself. And with this number agrees also His life upon earth of forty days after His resurrection. And this number is most frequently used in Scripture to express the mystery of perfection in the fourfold world. For the number ten has a certain perfection, and that multiplied by four makes forty. But from the evening of the burial to the dawn of the resurrection are thirty-six hours which is six squared. And this is referred to that ratio of the single to the double wherein there is the greatest consonance of co-adaptation. For twelve added to twenty-four suits the ratio of single added to double and makes thirty-six: namely a whole night with a whole day and a whole night, and this not without the mystery which I have noticed above. For not unfitly do we liken the spirit to the day and the body to the night. For the body of the Lord in His death and resurrection was a figure of our spirit and a type of our body. In this way, then, also that ratio of the single to the double is apparent in the thirty-six hours, when twelve are added to twenty-four. As to the reasons, indeed, why these numbers are so put in the Holy Scriptures, other people may trace out other reasons, either such that those which I have given are to be preferred to them, or such as are equally probable with mine, or even more probable than they are; but there is no one surely so foolish or so absurd as to contend that they are so put in the Scriptures for no purpose at all, and that there are no mystical reasons why those numbers are there mentioned. But those reasons which I have here given, I have either gathered from the authority of the church, according to the tradition of our forefathers, or from the testimony of the divine Scriptures, or from the nature itself of numbers and of similitudes. No sober person will decide against reason, no Christian against the Scriptures, no peaceable person against the church.