Luigi Gioia provides a fresh description and analysis of Augustine's monumental treatise, De Trinitate, working on a supposition of its unity and its coherence from structural, rhetorical, and theological points of view. The main arguments of the treatise are reviewed first: Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity; discussion of 'Arian' logical and ontological categories; a comparison between the process of knowledge and formal aspects of the confession of the mystery of the Trinity; an account of the so called 'psychological analogies'. These topics hold a predominantly instructive or polemical function. The unity and the coherence of the treatise become apparent especially when its description focuses on a truly theological understanding of knowledge of God: Augustine aims at leading the reader to the vision and enjoyment of God the Trinity, in whose image we are created. This mystagogical aspect of the rhetoric of De Trinitate is unfolded through Christology, soteriology, doctrine of the Holy Spirit and doctrine of revelation. At the same time, from the vantage point of love, Augustine detects and powerfully depicts the epistemological consequences of human sinfulness, thus unmasking the fundamental deficiency of received theories of knowledge. Only love restores knowledge and enables philosophers to yield to the injunction which resumes philosophical enterprise as a whole, namely 'know thyself'.
Author(s): Luigi Gioia OSB
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 368
Contents......Page 12
Abbreviations......Page 15
Introduction......Page 18
I. Anagogy, creationist ontology, and analogy......Page 23
II. Augustine and Western Trinitarian Theology......Page 27
III. Augustine and Modernity......Page 33
IV. The Exercitatio of the incarnation......Page 36
V. Conclusion......Page 39
I. Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity......Page 41
II. Knowledge of God......Page 47
III. The inseparability of soteriology and revelation......Page 49
IV. The logical and ontological categories of the ‘Arians’......Page 51
V. Conclusion......Page 55
I. Knowledge of our illness......Page 57
II. Philosophers on happiness......Page 58
III. Philosophers on knowledge of God......Page 60
IV. Philosophy in Augustine’s thought......Page 64
V. Conclusion......Page 83
I. The Incarnation......Page 85
II. Christ’s sacri.ce and his mediatory role......Page 100
III. Soteriology and eschatology: the subjective side of salvation......Page 114
IV. Conclusion......Page 120
I. The Trinitarian form of revelation......Page 123
II. God’s invisibility and his unknowability in revelation......Page 124
III. The transition to the inner-life of the Trinity......Page 129
IV. Wisdom and the identity between revealer and revelation......Page 134
V. The rule ‘God from God’......Page 137
VI. Conclusion......Page 140
I. Christology and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit......Page 142
II. The Holy Spirit and the unity of the Trinity......Page 146
III. The Holy Spirit and the ‘order’ of the Trinity......Page 150
IV. The identity and the property of the Holy Spirit......Page 152
V. The inner-Trinitarian origin of the Holy Spirit......Page 156
VI. The father, origin of the inner-life of the Trinity......Page 161
7. Trinity and Ontology......Page 164
I. Ontological categories and Trinitarian theology......Page 165
II. Criticism of substance and person......Page 171
III. An ontological bent in Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity?......Page 175
IV. Augustine’s real understanding of the inner-life of the Trinity......Page 178
I. Love and knowledge of God as truth......Page 187
II. Love and knowledge of objects of belief......Page 193
III. Love and knowledge of the Trinity......Page 197
IV. Love of love itself......Page 201
V. The theological roots of the argument of book 8......Page 203
I. Knowledge from the senses......Page 207
II. Illumination......Page 210
III. Intellectual knowledge......Page 215
IV. The mind......Page 222
V. Love’s misleading power......Page 224
VI. Self-charity and epistemology......Page 230
VII. The genesis of self-alienation......Page 233
10. Wisdom or Augustine’s Ideal of Philosophy......Page 236
I. Science and wisdom......Page 238
II. Philosophy as worship......Page 244
I. The characteristics of the image......Page 249
II. Augustine’s doctrine of creation......Page 256
III. Platonic participation and Augustine’s understanding of created being......Page 276
IV. The image in Plotinus and Marius Victorinus......Page 286
V. The image in the De Trinitate......Page 292
Conclusion: The Primacy of Love......Page 315
Bibliography......Page 320
Index Locorum......Page 337
D......Page 344
L......Page 345
S......Page 346
Z......Page 347
