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Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Colin Gunton
Colin Gunton
Affiliation:
King's CollegeStrand London WC2R 2LS
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Extract

We live in a culture marked, as few others have been, by persistent and deep-seated scepticism about the existence and knowability of God. Not only is the intellectual leadership of our times for the most part atheist or agnostic, but theology itself, certainly since the time of Kant, has been in fundamental disarray about the question, as witness, for example, the recent preoccupation with the question of revelation. In this paper I want to suggest, first, that the problem does not begin with Kant, because at least one of the causes of Western atheism is a theological tradition which encourages thought in the essential unknowability of God. Here, a distinction must be drawn. In one sense, of course, the doctrine of the unknowability of God is essential to theology. But to hold it in such a way as to suggest or teach that the unknowable God can in noway make himself known — so that there can be no theological ontology at all — is to offer the kind of hostages to fortune which so much Western theology has done. Can it really be a historical accident that it is here rather than anywhere else that atheism has found so fertile a soil?

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 1990 , pp. 33 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1990

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References

2 Rahner, Karl, The Trinity, E.T. by Donceel, Joseph, London: Burns and Oates, 1970, p. 17.Google Scholar

3 McKenna, Stephen, ‘Introduction’ to Saint Augustine. The Trinity. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963.Google Scholar

4 Harnack, Adolf, History of Dogma, E.T. by Speirs, E. B. and Millar, James. London: Williams and Norgate. 1898, vol. IV p. 131.Google Scholar

5 Wolfson, H. A., The Philosophy of the Church Fathers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956, p. 358.Google Scholar

6 References to the De Trinitate will appear in the text in parentheses, the book number being followed by the section reference in Arabic numerals, as in CCL vols. L and L A. Where translations are taken directly from either the Catholic University Press edition (note 4 above) or from Augustine: Later Works, E.T. by Burnaby, John, Library of Christian Classics, Vol. VIII, London: SCM Press, 1955Google Scholar, the reference will be followed by either ‘CUA’ or ‘LCC’. In some places I have made my own translations, erring on the literal side, because the translations often obscure Augustine's language or smooth out difficulties.

7 TeSelle, Eugene, Augustine the Theologian. London: Burns and Oates, 1970, pp. 229f.Google Scholar

8 Irenaeus, Fragment LIII, The Apostolic Fathers, with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, Library of the Fathers Vol. I, Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1977, p. 577.Google Scholar

9 Tertullian, , Against Praxeas 16, Tertullian's Treatise Against Praxeas, ed. and E.T. by Evans, Ernest, London: SPCK, 1948, p. 153.Google Scholar

10 Basil, , On the Holy Spirit XVI. 38, The Treatise de Spiritu Sancto, etc, of Saint Basil the Great, E.T. by Jackson, B., A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII, New York: Christian Literature Company, 1895, pp. 23f.Google Scholar

11 See, for example, VIII.3: “… we reject everything that is material. Even in the world of spirit, nothing that is changeable must be taken for God’ (LCC p. 40). As Christoph Schwoebel has pointed out to me, we here reach matters of great significance for an understanding of the relation between the doctrines of creation and incarnation. Despite the important part that Augustine played in the development of the doctrine of creation, there can be no doubt that because the mutual support that the two doctrines should give to each other is lacking, it is difficult for him to treat the world as creation, and so to hold together more adequately the realms of creation and salvation. That he does find it difficult, by virtue of his platonizing assumptions, to treat the material order as the vehicle of intrinsic meaning emerges in a number of areas. I have tried to isolate aspects in relation to christology and the nature of time in Yesterday and Today. A Study of Continuities in Christology, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983, pp. 108–110Google Scholar; and in aesthetics, ‘Creation and Recreation. An Exploration of Some Themes in Aesthetics and Theology.’ Modem Theology 2 (1985) pp. 1–19 (p. 2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For example, Hill, W. J., The Three-Personed God. The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982, pp. 55f.Google Scholar

13 Reflection is a problematic activity for at least two reasons. The first is that it can suggest an objectivizing process, whereby the thinker reflects upon the subject matter as something external, and therefore to an extent freely disposable. While it would be unfair to ascribe this to Augustine, there is no doubt that his method of beginning with dogma as something given which is then the object of rational analysis sails very close to the wind. The second is that it can encourage the notion that theology is essentially an inner process, consisting in large measure in the bringing to expression of the contents of the mind. Here again, Augustine has something to answer for. The overall difficulty is a rather static conception of dogmatics, along with a loss of the communal and participatory elements of theology.

14 Zizioulas, John, Being As Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985.Google Scholar

15 Wolfson, , Philosophy, pp. 326f.Google Scholar

16 Yerkes, James, The Christology of Hegel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983, pp. 53f.Google Scholar

17 I owe to Christoph Schwoebel the suggestion that there can be developed in this context another link between substance ontology and individualism and intellectualism. A starting point in substance, as distinct from one in the threefold economy, gives the whole development a radically different shape. He points out that individualism is engendered by the fact that for a substance it is of no concern whether it is exemplified by one, three or a hundred individuals. To demonstrate exemplification in one individual is quite sufficient, and on neoplatonic presuppositions necessary in the case of God. Similarly, intellectualism is encouraged by a starting place in a hierarchical ontology where the mental always has priority over the material, which in turn encourages Augustine to take his analogies from the mental acts of one individual. These observations reinforce the impression, already reported, that Augustine is doing far more than defend the given dogma of the Trinity. His is a systematic theology of massive consistency all of whose parts provide mutual support for each other, and, indeed, to a large extent mutually imply each other.

18 Bradbury, Nicholas, in a review in SJT 40 (1987) p. 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cites the following summary of Jesuit spirituality: ‘in brief: I want, above all else, the will of God; for I AM the will of God. I seek the grace to know myself.’ We cannot blame Augustine for all of the decadent mysticism which has developed in the West, but neither can he be held to be without influence in it.

19 Mackey, James, The Christian Experience of God as Trinity. London: SCM Press, 1983, p. 155.Google Scholar

20 XV. 29, LCC p. 158. There is some case for saying that the word ‘originally’ is in this context a systematically misleading translation, because if the Spirit's origin is from the Father, then it cannot be also from the Son. By contrast, ‘principally’ allowed Augustine to make his point.

21 Oddly, having used ‘originally’ as a translation for ‘principaliter’, the translator here changes to ‘ultimately’.

22 Wolfson, , Philosophy, p. 357.Google Scholar