Augustine

English

Behold, the Trinity appears to me in a riddle, which you are, my God; since you, Father, in the Beginning of our wisdom — which is your Wisdom, born of you, equal to you and coeternal, that is, in your Son — made heaven and earth. And we have said many things about the heaven of heaven, and about the earth invisible and unordered, and about the darksome deep, according to the wandering falls of a spiritual formlessness, unless it were turned to him from whom it had whatever life it had, and by illumination were made a beautiful life, and were the heaven of that heaven which was afterwards made between water and water. And I already held the Father in the name of God, who made these things, and the Son in the name of the Beginning, in whom he made these things; and believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I sought it in his holy sayings — and behold, your Spirit was borne over the waters. Behold the Trinity, my God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, creator of all creation.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Latin

PL 32, col. 847 · pd

Notes

The three-term reading in its classical form, and it is autobiography rather than exegesis: the Father in the name of God, the Son in the name of the Beginning, and then — 'believing my God to be a Trinity, as I did believe, I sought it in his holy sayings, and behold, your Spirit was borne over the waters.' The order of the sentence is the order of the search. He held two of the three from the first verse, he already believed the third, and he went looking for it in the text; and the chapter heading the editors gave it says what he does not, that the Trinity which is God is understood from the first words of Genesis. Augustine himself calls it a riddle, in aenigmate. This is the passage that Bede, the Glossa, Bruno, Honorius and Abelard are all repeating, and none of them keeps the word riddle.

Threads

• ← echoes · Bruno of Segni
  'Habes ergo Deum, id est Patrem; habes et principium, id est Filium … Habes igitur et Spiritum sanctum' is Augustine's three-term reading turned into a schoolroom enumeration, with the same John 8:25 for the Son and the same Spirit of v. 2 for the third. What Augustine reached at the end of a search and called a riddle, Bruno hands over in three sentences as something the reader can check.
• → echoes · Augustine
  The same triad in the same order in two works: the Father in the name of God, the Son in the name of the Beginning, the Spirit borne over the waters, which De Genesi ad litteram calls the completa commemoratio Trinitatis. What the Confessions add is the sequence of the search — he held two, he already believed the third, and he went looking for it in the text.
• ← contests · Augustine
  Augustine on both sides of the question this crux really turns on. In the unfinished commentary the catholic faith is set out before the exposition begins, expressly because heretics drag Scripture to their own opinion, so that the Trinity is the rule the chapter will be read under. In the Confessions the Trinity 'appears to me in a riddle' out of the first words. The two are not incompatible and he never reconciles them, and every later Latin witness on this daf writes as though only the second were true.
• → cites · Bede
  Bede's sentence is Augustine's triad with the two halves welded: 'in principio, id est in Filio, Pater fecit coelum et terram' and then the Spirit added 'ut totius simul Trinitatis in creatione mundi virtutem significaret'. The riddle has become a demonstration, and the word aenigma is gone.
• ← echoes · Wigbod
  'In principio sibi coaeterno fecit Deus coelum et terram, in unigenito Filio qui est sapientia Patris' is Augustine's 'in Principio sapientiae nostrae quod est tua Sapientia de te nata, aequalis tibi et coaeterna, id est in Filio tuo' with the possessives dropped and 1 Cor 1:24 put in for the identification. The Carolingian dialogue asked a question about time and was answered with a person.
• ← echoes · Honorius Augustodunensis
  Honorius states the triad and then does something Augustine does not: he distributes the works. 'Note the Trinity: to God the Father is ascribed the creation of the world, to the Son the disposition of things, to the Holy Spirit the quickening or adorning of all.' That is the appropriation doctrine of the twelfth-century schools laid over the first two verses, and it is the distribution of labour Augustine had warned against.
• ← echoes · Peter Comestor
  Phase 4. 'Creatus autem est in principio, id est in Filio' is Augustine's second term reduced to an apposition and taught as settled — the riddle of Confessions XIII.5 become a gloss a reader passes over. Written at Phase 4 because `comestor-hs-1-1` was built for K1 and its opening clause belongs to this crux.