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ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE
(cont) |
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by St Augustine of Hippo |
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Ch 5. The Trinity the true
object of enjoyment |
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5. The true objects of enjoyment, then, are the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit, who are
at the same time the Trinity, one Being, supreme above all, and
common to all who enjoy Him, if
He is an object, and not rather the cause of all objects, or
indeed even if He is the cause of
all. For it is not easy to find a name that will suitably express
so great excellence, unless it is better
to speak in this way: The Trinity, one God, of whom are all
things, through whom are all things,
in whom are all things. Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, and each of these by
Himself, is God, and at the same time they are all one God; and
each of them by Himself is a
complete substance, and yet they are all one substance. The Father
is not the Son nor the Holy
Spirit; the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy
Spirit is not the Father nor the
Son: but the Father is only Father, the Son is only Son, and the
Holy Spirit is only Holy Spirit. To
all three belong the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the
same majesty, the same power.
In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit
the harmony of unity and equality;
and these three attributes are all one because of the Father, all
equal because of the Son, and all
harmonious because of the Holy Spirit.
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Ch 6. In what sense God is ineffable |
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6. Have I spoken of God, or uttered His praise, in any worthy way?
Nay, I feel that I have done
nothing more than desire to speak; and if I have said anything, it
is not what I desired to say. How
do I know this, except from the fact that God is unspeakable? But
what I have said, if it had been
unspeakable, could not have been spoken. And so God is not even to
be called "unspeakable,"
because to say even this is to speak of Him. Thus there arises a
curious contradiction of words,
because if the unspeakable is what cannot be spoken of, it is not
unspeakable if it can be called
unspeakable. And this opposition of words is rather to be avoided
by silence than to be explained
away by speech. And yet God, although nothing worthy of His
greatness can be said of Him, has
condescended to accept the worship of men's mouths, and has
desired us through the medium of
our own words to rejoice in His praise. For on this principle it
is that He is called Deus (God). For
the sound of those two syllables in itself conveys no true
knowledge of His nature; but yet all
who know the Latin tongue are led, when that sound reaches their
ears, to think of a nature
supreme in excellence and eternal in existence.
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Ch 7. What all men understand by the
term God |
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7. For when the one supreme God of gods is thought of, even by
those who believe that there
are other gods, and who call them by that name, and worship them
as gods, their thought takes
the form of an endeavour to reach the conception of a nature, than
which nothing more excellent
or more exalted exists. And since men are moved by different kinds
of pleasures, partly by those
which pertain to the bodily senses, partly by those which pertain
to the intellect and soul, those of
them who are in bondage to sense think that either the heavens, or
what appears to be most
brilliant in the heavens, or the universe itself, is God of gods:
or if they try to get beyond the
universe, they picture to themselves something of dazzling
brightness, and think of it vaguely as
infinite, or of the most beautiful form conceivable; or they
represent it in the form of the human
body, if they think that superior to all others. Or if they think
that there is no one God supreme
above the rest, but that there are many or even innumerable gods
of equal rank, still these too they
conceive as possessed of shape and form, according to what each
man thinks the pattern of
excellence. Those, on the other hand, who endeavour by an effort
of the intelligence to reach a
conception of God, place Him above all visible and bodily natures,
and even above all intelligent
and spiritual natures that are subject to change. All, however,
strive emulously to exalt the
excellence of God: nor could any one be found to believe that any
being to whom there exists a
superior is God. And so all concur in believing that God is that
which excels in dignity all other
objects.
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Ch 8. God to be esteemed above all else
because He is unchangeable Wisdom |
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8. And since all who think about God think of Him as living,
they only can form any conception
of Him that is not absurd and unworthy who think of Him as life
itself; and, whatever may be the
bodily form that has suggested itself to them, recognize that it
is by life it lives or does not live,
and prefer what is living to what is dead; who understand that the
living bodily form itself,
however it may outshine all others in splendour, overtop them in
size, and excel them in beauty, is
quite a distinct thing from the life by which it is quickened; and
who look upon the life as
incomparably superior in dignity and worth to the mass which is
quickened and animated by it.
Then, when they go on to look into the nature of the life itself,
if they find it mere nutritive life,
without sensibility, such as that of plants, they consider it
inferior to sentient life, such as that of
cattle; and above this, again, they place intelligent life, such
as that of men. And, perceiving that
even this is subject to change, they are compelled to place above
it, again, that unchangeable life,
which is not at one time foolish, at another time wise, but on the
contrary is wisdom itself. For a
wise intelligence, that is, one that has attained to wisdom, was,
previous to its attaining wisdom,
unwise. But wisdom itself never was unwise, and never can become
so. And if men never caught
sight of this wisdom, they could never with entire confidence
prefer a life which is unchangeably
wise to one that is subject to change. This will be evident, if we
consider that the very rule of truth
by which they affirm the unchangeable life to be the more
excellent, is itself unchangeable: and
they cannot find such a rule, except by going beyond their own
nature; for they find nothing in
themselves that is not subject to change.
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