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The Self Before God? Rethinking Augustine's Trinitarian Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2007

Matthew Drever
Matthew Drever
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

What is often termed the modern crisis of the Western self—the problems associated with the proto-Cartesian and proto-Kantian conceptions of the self—has given rise to attempts not only to confront the crisis constructively, but also to trace its origin. In one philosophical reading of the development of the crisis in the Western self, Augustine stands as one of its forefathers. In this reading, Augustine's anthropology is anchored firmly within Platonism and is viewed as a key precursor of the tradition leading to the modern, autonomous self of Descartes and Kant. Such a reading often focuses on Augustine's somewhat idiosyncratic self-analysis in Confessionum libri [Conf.] XIII, and points to his so-called psychological model of the Trinity found in De Trinitate [Trin.]. It is argued that his method of inward movement, which involves the utilization of the structures of individual consciousness as an analogy to the immanent Trinity, in conjunction with his analysis of the individual self in Conf., becomes a basic foundation for the modern private, autonomous self.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 100 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 233 - 242
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© 2007 Cambridge University Press

Introduction

What is often termed the modern crisis of the Western self1

I should note that my approach to Augustine takes its orientation from a set of modern theological and philosophical problems associated with the nature of the self, and that these issues loom in the background. Briefly stated, one way of tracing this well-known modern crisis of the self is in terms of the rise of historical consciousness, which may be dated back to Herder, and which has been attended by the destabilizing and de-centering of the self as a result of various strands of thought: the increased awareness of the effects of history and culture on the self (e.g., Hegel, Marx, and feminist theory); the depths of the self beyond the rational, self-present ‘I’ (e.g., Nietzsche, Freud); the penetration of language into the self (e.g., Gadamer, Wittgenstein).

—the problems associated with the proto-Cartesian and proto-Kantian conceptions of the self—has given rise to attempts not only to confront the crisis constructively, but also to trace its origin. In one philosophical reading of the development of the crisis in the Western self, Augustine stands as one of its forefathers. In this reading, Augustine's anthropology is anchored firmly within Platonism and is viewed as a key precursor of the tradition leading to the modern, autonomous self of Descartes and Kant.2

Different versions of this narrative can be found in the following: Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); Stephen Menn, Descartes and Augustine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Phillip Cary, Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Cary is primarily concerned with analyzing Augustine's relation to Neoplatonism, but his argument moves the somewhat abridged claims of Taylor forward in important ways. Menn is more cautious in linking Descartes to Augustine, arguing that Descartes does not take from Augustine a specific set of metaphysical principles but rather an analytic method (which Augustine takes from Plotinus) of moving from sense experience to intellectual first principles. There is also a great deal of recent scholarship that focuses on Augustine's philosophical context but is not concerned with the relation between Augustine and Descartes. Some examples of this scholarship are: James Wetzel, Augustine and the Limits of Virtue (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Wayne J. Hankey, “‘Knowing as We Are Known’ in Confessions 10 and Other Philosophical, Augustinian and Christian Obedience to the Delphic Gnothi Seauton from Socrates to Modernity,” Augustinian Studies 31 (2003) 23–48.

Such a reading often focuses on Augustine's somewhat idiosyncratic self-analysis in Confessionum libri [Conf.] XIII, and points to his so-called psychological model of the Trinity found in De Trinitate [Trin.]. It is argued that his method of inward movement, which involves the utilization of the structures of individual consciousness as an analogy to the immanent Trinity, in conjunction with his analysis of the individual self in Conf., becomes a basic foundation for the modern private, autonomous self.

A second trend accompanies this particular philosophical reading of Augustine's anthropology. Michel Barnes has noted that much modern scholarship on Augustine by systematic theologians tends somewhat paradoxically to presuppose a philosophical foundation (in Neoplatonism) for Augustine's trinitarian thought rather than a Christian doctrinal foundation.3

Michel René Barnes, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 56 (1995) 244. For a more specific analysis by Barnes of the Christian doctrinal context of Augustine's trinitarian thought, see “The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: MT 5:8 in Augustine's Trinitarian Theology of 400,” Modern Theology 19 (2003) 329–55.

This often leads to criticisms that Augustine's trinitarian thought is overly speculative. On the one hand, it is argued that Augustine formulates a model of the Trinity based on an abstract, neoplatonic conception of the mind, which psychologizes God and potentially generates a type of onto-theology.4

The term “onto-theology” generally refers to a type of theology in which the metaphysical category of “being” is given a preeminent place in descriptions of God and creation. The term has two modern sources: Kant and Heidegger. For Kant, it is a subcategory of a type of theology that derives from reason (as opposed to revelation). For Heidegger, the term is synonymous with metaphysics and characterizes all attempts to describe God and reality according to a reified, abstract concept of “being.” It is Heidegger who offers the strongest negative critique of onto-theology, a critique still being engaged in theology and philosophy.

On the other hand, it is argued that this philosophical model minimizes the significance of history and the incarnation, and so the economy of salvation.

In particular, Colin Gunton has raised pointed criticism of Augustine concerning the supposed foundation of his trinitarian thought in Neoplatonism. He argues that Augustine's famous analogy between the triadic structures of the mind—memory, understanding, and will—and the Trinity is fundamentally derivative of a neoplatonic philosophy of the mind that colors Augustine's model of the Trinity with an abstract individualism and intellectualism, and distances the Trinity from its ecclesiological and soteriological context.5

Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997) 42–43.

Gunton contrasts this model of the Trinity with the tradition in the East of grounding the Trinity in the economy of salvation—God's self-revelation as Father, Son, and Spirit within salvation history.6

More generally, Gunton notes that Augustine's relation to neoplatonism, and especially to the neoplatonic conception of God as the One, leads to Augustine's emphasis on the unity of God (de Deo Uno) in contrast with the Greek emphasis on the divine economy (de Deo Trino). Thus, Gunton tends to endorse a distinction between East and West, which follows a popular reading of de Régnon, regarding how the doctrine of God is approached: the Latin West begins with the unity of God; the Greek East begins with the three persons of the Trinity. See Hennessy, in this issue, for a detailed discussion of this question.

He summarizes the consequences of Augustine's model of the Trinity as follows: “The crucial analogy for Augustine is between the inner structure of the human mind and the inner being of God, because it is in the former that the latter is made known, this side of eternity at any rate, more really than in the ‘outer’ economy of grace.”7

Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 45.

But what if the directionality between the mind and God suggested by Gunton is actually the reverse in Augustine's trinitarian thought? What if the structure of the mind is most fundamentally made known through the Trinity? Moreover, what if it is not the “inner being of God” that is at issue here, but the “‘outer’ economy of grace”? What if the God involved here is the trinitarian God of salvation? In this essay I shall address these questions by defending the following claim: Augustine's trinitarian thought does not move from the categories of the self to a description of the Trinity. Rather, the reverse is true: through a soteriological reversal, in which the self is first created and then re-formed by Christ, the Trinity is the basis for the self. This soteriological reversal is fundamentally tied to Augustine's anthropology and, more specifically, to his claim that the authentic self is not the self in full possession, power and knowledge of itself, but the self created in the image of the Trinity, possessed by God, and empowered through Christ. We shall see that an explanation of this soteriological reversal stands not only against categorizing Augustine's trinitarian thought as a psychological model, but also against characterizing Augustine's anthropology as proto-Cartesian.

To develop this argument, it is important to identify the proper framework for interpreting the trinitarian thought of Augustine. There has been a recent attempt in historical theology by Barnes, Ayres, and others to argue that many of the traditional categories for analyzing pre- and post-Nicene thought (especially the distinction between East and West on the starting points of de Deo Trino vs. de Deo Uno) are inadequate.8

Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Barnes, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology”; and in this issue of HTR, see Lewis Ayres, “Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Introduction.”

With regard to Augustine, it is argued that a framework grounded in either the East/West dichotomy or a neoplatonic context is inappropriate for interpreting his model of the Trinity. Such a framework distorts many of the Nicene themes—soteriology, ecclesiology, God/world relation—central to Augustine's account of the Trinity. A better framework is one that underscores Augustine's Christian doctrinal context (as opposed to his philosophical context),9

On the importance of the doctrinal context for an interpretation of Augustine, see the work of Ayres and Barnes mentioned above. Also see the following articles: Lewis Ayres, “Augustine and the Rule of Faith: Rhetoric, Christology, and the Foundation of Christian Thinking,” Augustinian Studies 36 (2005) 33–49; Lewis Ayres, “The Christological Context of Augustine's De Trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII–XV,” Augustinian Studies 29 (1998) 111–39.

as well as the continuities shared by the various defenders of Nicaea (both Eastern and Western).

This essay does not enter the debate concerning the proper framework for interpreting Augustine at a general level. Rather, I shall offer some rather specific remarks about Augustine's utilization of the Christian doctrines of creatio ex nihilo and the imago Dei. Much has been written on Augustine's formulation of these doctrines, and my point is neither to offer an evaluation of the existing secondary scholarship, nor to provide anything approaching a comprehensive analysis of Augustine's own account of these doctrines.10

In addition to the work of Ayres and Barnes noted above, see the following scholarship for recent studies that address these doctrines and their importance for reading Augustine within a Christian doctrinal context: J. E. Sullivan, The Image of God (Dubuque, Iowa: Priority, 1963); Rowan Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” in Collectanea Augustiniana. mélanges T. J. van Bavel (ed. B. Bruning, M. Lamberigts, and J. van Houlin; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990) 317–22; Rowan Williams, “ ‘Good for Nothing?’ Augustine on Creation,” Augustinian Studies 25 (1994) 9–23; John C. Cavadini, “The Quest for Truth in Augustine's De Trinitate,” Theological Studies 58 (1997) 429–40; B. Studer, “History and Faith in Augustine's De Trinitate,” Augustinian Studies 28 (1997) 7–50; Michael Hanby, Augustine and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003); Robert Dodaro, Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Peter Burnell, The Augustinian Person (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press of America, 2005).

Rather, I shall examine how they frame an alternative account (to that of Gunton, Taylor, and others) of Augustine's trinitarian thought within a Christian doctrinal context, one that is responsive to Barnes and Ayres,11

I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to two of my teachers, Margaret Miles and Jean-Luc Marion, who have significantly influenced my interpretation of Augustine on this issue.

and one that uncovers the fundamental soteriological dimension underlying Augustine's trinitarian thought.

In his reconsideration of the doctrinal context of Nicene trinitarian thought, Lewis Ayres has traced several fundamental principles that run through Nicene theology, which are important for a reevaluation of Augustine's so-called psychological model of the Trinity. On the doctrine of creation, he has noted that pro-Nicene theologians work from a twofold relation between God and the world: God's immediate presence in creation, and God's distinction from creation.12

The general contours of this line of thought on the God/world relation are certainly not unique to fourth- and fifth-century Nicene theologians. In modern systematic theology, this idea is often described by the phrase “God's transcendence-in-immanence”: God's immediacy to all creation is God's transcendence from any particular part of creation. And it is usually accompanied by some apophatic statement about our knowledge of God, also important in early Nicene theology.

In regard to the latter relation, Ayres argues that: “We have, then, arrived at the heart of this first strategy [of Nicene trinitarian thought] and at a fundamental aspect of the pro-Nicene life of the mind: reflection on the distinction between Creator and creation is the context within which all speech about God (including the God-given language of Scripture) must be considered and examined.”13

Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 287.

Ayres goes on to note the fundamental apophatic dimension within Nicene trinitarian thought that characterizes God's participation in the world: “[For] pro-Nicenes, it is the mysteriousness and incomprehensibility of such participation that is of paramount importance.”14

Ibid., 321.

This strong epistemic limitation on access to God is certainly related to the ontological claim of God's radical distinctness from the world, but it also sets up a seeming paradox in the Nicene conception of the God/world relation: the God who is immediately present to the world is also the God who is mysterious and incomprehensible.15

It is interesting to note that this theme, more generally construed, is also a hallmark of modern phenomenology. That is, in phenomenology it is often argued that, that which lies closest to us is also that which is the most mysterious.

To address the claims of both Barnes and Ayres, as well as the more general descriptions of Augustine's so-called psychological model of the Trinity, I shall turn to Augustine's formulation of the Christian doctrines of creatio ex nihilo and the imago Dei, and how he employs them in his trinitarian theology. Here the anthropological question is crucial: how do the doctrines of creatio ex nihilo and the imago Dei characterize the human self in relation to God? This question is important because for Augustine, as for other patristic writes, the mind offers the best analogy to the Trinity, and hence the relation between the self and God is fundamental to his trinitarian thought. This insight is famously explicated by Augustine in De Trinitate and has come to be called by some his psychological model of the Trinity. The doctrine of ex nihilo receives little explicit attention there, although it is central to a reevaluation of his trinitarian project. To grasp the anthropological application of the doctrines of ex nihilo and the imago Dei, we can turn to Augustine's commentaries on Genesis—especially Conf. and De Genesi ad litteram [Gen. litt.]. Here he offers a characterization of what it means for humans both to exist in the image of God and to be created out of nothing.

Creatio Ex Nihilo

Ayres has argued that the doctrines of simplicity and inseparability of operations are important strategies in Nicene thought, which are employed to articulate the nature and relation of the persons within the Trinity. Closely related to these strategies is the core idea of the way God is in contrast to the way creation is: God is his being necessarily; humans have their being contingently. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo grounds and sharpens this distinction. Humans are not the source of their existence, nor is the divine substance the source of their existence. Humans are created from nothing according to God's good purpose and experience this dynamic—between nothingness and goodness—as the root of their contingency.

Like other defenders of Nicaea, Augustine defends a strong qualitative distinction between God and creation, and in Conf. he traces its particular anthropological implications. It is common to read Conf. as centered around the two conversion narratives in books VII and VIII. However, this reading often misses Augustine's comments in book XII about the origin of the cosmos ex nihilo.16

Indeed, the common reading often ignores altogether the final three books of the Conf.

Here the origin of the cosmos from nothing is closely associated with its transitory, changing, and often unstable nature, and is contrasted with the eternal, unchanging God.17

Conf. 12.6.6, 12.7.7, 12.11.11.

This contrasting dynamic is in the background of Augustine's analysis of the self in its relation to God in the earlier books of Conf. For Augustine, creatio ex nihilo identifies a fundamental potential for (moral and ontological) instability or mutability in human existence, exacerbated all the more by sin. The ramifications of this characterization of the self permeate the Conf.: the anxious grasping (concupiscentia) of the infant; the conforming effect, for good or ill, of friendship; turning to God during conversion;18

For more on the relation between contingency and turning, see Gen. litt. 1.1.2–3, 1.4.9, 1.5.10, 3.20.31–32, where turning is described both as the way the intellectual creation conforms to God, and as the way humans are converted through Christ.

the probing of memory and time (i.e., the distensio animi); and Augustine's continual struggle with temptation.

This reading of Conf. is related to an important line of modern Augustinian scholarship, evident in Miles, Hanby, Williams, and Teske, in which it is argued that the Augustinian self is not best conceived as a static, autonomous entity according to abstract philosophical/psychological categories, but rather as a dynamic and malleable relational entity. Miles describes the Augustinian self as “primarily a partially centered energy, initially barely distinguishable from its cosmic, physical, and spiritual environment, which comes to be cumulatively distinguished and defined by the objects of its attention and affection.”19

Margaret Miles, “Vision: The Eye of the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine's De Trinitate and Confessions,” The Journal of Religion (1983) 129. Also see Margaret Miles, Augustine on the Body (American Academy of Religion Dissertation Series #31; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1979); Williams, “ ‘Good for Nothing?’ Augustine on Creation”; Roland Teske, “Augustine's Theory of Soul,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 116–23; Hanby, Augustine and Modernity.

Following this characterization of the Augustinian self, three points emerge that are directly relevant to the interpretation of Augustine's trinitarian theology, especially in Trin. First, the Augustinian self is not the proto-Cartesian, autonomous self. The autonomous self for Augustine—literally, the auto-nomos self, the self who is a law unto him or herself—is a self ex nihilo not yet formed into anything. The Augustinian self is a concrete self through its various relations, broadly construed to include material and spiritual relations.20

While it is true that spiritual reality pertains most intimately and truly to the self, it is incorrect to claim that material reality has no substantive value for the self. The doctrines of incarnation and physical resurrection led Augustine to advocate the irreducible value of material reality (body) for the self.

Second, the type of inward space that characterizes the concrete, historical self as creatio ex nihilo is a morally charged space of dynamic relation, and one in need of redemption. Not only is the self malleable and unstable, but it has been fundamentally corrupted through sin. This means that Augustine's inward turn into the self in Trin. does not represent a simple road through a stable psyche to the truth of the triune God. It is neither the inner-Cartesian space of rational self-reflection, nor the objective and transparent—geometrical, nomological—space of Newtonian physics. It is an ethically charged space, opaque and treacherous as a result of human sin, wherein one is easily deceived and corrupted. If the Christian wants to traverse this inward space to arrive at a deeper understanding of the Trinity, it is requisite to seek the soteriological purification of this inward space.

Hence, inward space is a soteriological space. This recognition is essential to an interpretation of the latter half of Trin., where Augustine develops the analogy between the mind and the Trinity. If one acknowledges the primacy of the soteriological dimension within the inward space of self, wherein God's action is always the prior condition of truth and goodness within the self, it orients one to see a deeper directionality that Augustine establishes between the triadic structure of the mind and the three persons of the Trinity. The triadic structure of the mind does not provide the framework for understanding the triune God. Rather the reverse is true: the triune God establishes the triadic structure of the true self—the imago Dei—through which one comes to understand both one's self and God. It may be the case in Trin., that the explanation moves from the triadic structure of the self to the Trinity. But this sequence is one that accommodates sinful humanity, who must move from the material to the spiritual, from the temporal to the eternal.21

Trin. 7.3.9, 7.4.12, 15.2.10.

If this sequence is taken as final, then Augustine may be guilty of psychologizing the Trinity. However, the deep and often hidden soteriological movement is the reverse of the explanatory movement in Trin.: God's creating and saving act, which clearly has a triune structure for Augustine, establishes and restores the self as imago Dei, and in turn allows us access to the Trinity.

Third, while Trin. advances a positive soteriological relation between the Trinity and the self, it should not be inferred that the redeemed self experiences the full disclosure of God. The apophatic caveats in book 15 of Trin. serve as explicit warnings against this misconception. But Augustine's understanding of the self ought to provide a continual reminder throughout the latter half of Trin. that even the redeemed Augustinian self remains creatio ex nihilo and so subject to the limitations of its creatureliness.22

Trin. 15.4.26.

On this point, Rowan Williams has argued that for Augustine, human salvation means “a movement into our createdness,”23

Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” 321.

and that even the visio Dei means seeing God according to our capacity within the order of creation. Related to this point is Ayres's more general twofold claim (noted above) that “pro-Nicene” thought is interested in preserving both the triune God's intimate relation with creation and divine mystery. The soteriological dynamic in Trin. and Conf. supports this twofold claim: while human salvation restores the triune image of God within the self, this soteriological transformation does not do away with the limitations of human creatureliness, and so preserves a healthy respect for divine mystery. That is, salvation does not dissolve the gap between God and creation established in God's creating ex nihilo, and so it does not open the Trinity to full disclosure:

We must admit further that even when we are like him, when we shall see him as he is … even when this happens, if it does happen, it will be a creature that was once formable which is formed, so that it now lacks nothing of the form to which it was intended it should come; but even so it will not be right or possible to put it on the same level as that simplicity in which there is not something formable that has been formed or reformed, but just form.24

Trin. 15.4.26.

Imago Dei

Thus far, I have traced the significance of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo for reinterpreting Augustine's trinitarian and anthropological thought. In the course of the discussion, I have had occasion to mention the concept of the imago Dei. Now I shall turn more directly to this concept and the way Augustine's use of it underscores the argument I have been advancing. One of his important explications of this concept is found in Gen. litt. where he parses Genesis 1–2 in order to arrive at the essence of human nature.25

Prof. Marion has provided invaluable insight to me through various discussions on the topic of Augustine's definition of the self that flows out of his interpretation of Gen 1–2.

According to Augustine, all creation receives its order—its essence, or definition—through the Son. For most of creation this order comes via the rationes or ideas, eternally held within the Son, which are infused in creation as the rationes seminales. These seminal ideas provide the pre-established structure that governs the coming into existence of material objects. The order imposed on material creation through these ideas allows for the delineation of creation into a genus/species framework. Humans, however, are unique in material creation in that their order—essence, definition—does not follow pre-established rationes seminales, but rather arises through their turning to and recognition of God.26

Gen. litt. 3.20.31–32.

This is what it means for humans to be created according to the image and likeness of God. One consequence of this is that the essence of human nature cannot be understood within the genus/species paradigm that orders the rest of the material creation. The true essence of human nature is defined (if this term remains appropriate) by how it images God, and not the one God of Plotinus but the Trinity—“man is the image of the Trinity.”27

Trin. 7.4.12. Gen. litt. 3.19.29.

Augustine is careful to differentiate the way the Son images God from the way in which humans do so. This is an important distinction, and one in which the key Nicene trinitarian themes of divine simplicity, inseparable operation, and unchangeability are operative.28

It should also be noted that these doctrines are integral to Augustine's formulation of the Trinity in the first half of Trin.; see Trin. 4.5.26–27, 32; 7.1.2; and the summary in 15.2.6–12; 15.4.22–24.

The Son is distinct from creation precisely because the Son is God as the Father is God.29

Gen. litt. 1.5.10, 1.10.20.

The Son is unchanging wisdom and blessedness as the Father is (and so also the Spirit). Augustine, being the close reader that he is, contrasts this with humans who are according to the image rather than the image itself. One way of parsing this distinction is in terms of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. In Gen. litt., Augustine describes the human imaging of God at creation as the turning of humans to God and compares it with the redemptive turning of humans back to God that occurs though the Word.30

The language of turning is a favorite way in which Augustine describes the human relation to God.

In both instances, this turning is a movement away from nothingness. In the latter case, it is a turning from the moral nothingness of sin; in the former case, it is a turning from the nothingness out of which all finite existence arises.

This has significant consequences for understanding the project of Trin. If the true essence of human nature is the imago Dei and this is given in the turning of humans to God from the nothingness out of which they were created, then the resources available within the self for understanding God are also given in this turning to God. The self opens to God or to nothing, so that apart from God the self has no real or true form through which to understand God. Hence, Augustine's inward turn into the self has as its precondition God's self-revelatory actions of creating and redeeming the self, in which God is revealed as the triune God.

Here again, as we saw above, there is an underlying reversal in the movement to God as it is described in Trin. Though Augustine narrates the movement of the self to God as a process of going into the triadic structures of the self and then up to the triune God, this should not be interpreted as the establishment of a psychological model of the Trinity, or as the prefiguring of the independent, autonomous self, which has its own resources for understanding the divine. The autonomous (auto-nomos) self, the self who is a law unto him or herself, is most fundamentally a self who is a law unto nothing. The movement of self to God is premised on the opposite and prior movement of God to self: it is only because God has created humans in the image of the Trinity and redeemed that image through Christ that the human self has a triadic structure capable of granting some understanding of the Trinity.

Conclusion

On a general level, the relation Augustine continuously draws between the self and God, and self-knowledge and knowledge of God, is neither new nor unique to Christianity. There is a long history of sophisticated speculation on this topic in Greek philosophy, especially in Platonism. What is unique to Augustine is his use of the Christian doctrines of creatio ex nihilo and the imago Dei. I have argued that his use of these concepts in Conf. and Gen. litt. as a way of conceiving the relation between the self and God is a necessary framework for interpreting how the triadic analogies of the mind function in Trin. to image the Trinity. In each case, the directionality between the mind and the Trinity moves from God to the self. More specifically, underlying Augustine's trinitarian thought is the prior action of creation and salvation imparted from the triune God to the self, an action which allows the self to image the Trinity and so move back to God.

It is this way of orienting the relation between the self and God, along with Augustine's conviction of the ultimate mystery of God, that underlies his apophatic turn in Book XV of Trin. All analogies between the self and the Trinity break down at some point, not only because of the inherent limitations of human language, but also because the self that discloses the Trinity is itself first disclosed under the conditions of creation and mystery. That is, the self in itself is ultimately nothing and only has form (intelligibility) insofar as it images the Trinity. Thus, the mystery that cloaks God applies to both God and the self insofar as the triadic analogies that Augustine finds in the self, if they faithfully image the authentic self (i.e., the imago Dei), will always bear traces of the mystery of God.

I have attempted to show that this line of argument has consequences not only for reinterpreting Augustine trinitarian thought, but also for reinterpreting his anthropology. Augustine's insistence that the self is in the image of the Trinity, in conjunction with his claim that the self's imaging of the Trinity is according to God's prior action of creation and salvation, not only moves Augustine's account of the Trinity beyond that of a monistic neoplatonism, but also moves his anthropology beyond that of a proto-Cartesianism. We have seen that the doctrines of creatio ex nihilo and the imago Dei highlight Augustine's utilization of key Nicene trinitarian themes: God's immediacy to and yet distinction from creation; God's disclosure to the self and the paradoxical presence of mystery in both God and the self; and the soteriological dimension that permeates creation and the self. We have also seen the close relation Augustine maintains between the Trinity and the self. Thus, it is fitting that as scholars reexamine the way Nicene themes function in Augustine's trinitarian thought, this will lead to the application of these themes to Augustine's anthropology and to a rethinking of his conception of the self.