The Theological Epistemology of Augustine's De Trinitate

by Gioia, OSB, Luigi

• ISBN13: 9780199553464
• ISBN10: 0199553467
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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 Biography

Dr Luigi Gioia, OSB, was a member of Christ Church, Oxford, between 1998-2003. He has held his current role of Director of Studies at the Abbey of Maylis since 2004.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. xiv
Introduction	p. 1
Augustine and his Critics	p. 6
Anagogy, creationist ontology, and analogy	p. 6
Augustine and Western Trinitarian Theology	p. 10
Augustine and Modernity	p. 16
The Exercitatio of the incarnation	p. 19
Conclusion	p. 22
Against the 'Arians': Outline of Books 1 to 7	p. 24
Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity	p. 24
Knowledge of God	p. 30
The inseparability of soteriology and revelation	p. 32
The logical and ontological categories of the 'Arians'	p. 34
Conclusion	p. 38
Augustine and Philosophers	p. 40
Knowledge of our illness	p. 40
Philosophers on happiness	p. 41
Philosophers on knowledge of God	p. 43
Philosophy in Augustine's thought	p. 47
Conclusion	p. 66
Christ, Salvation, and Knowledge of God	p. 68
The Incarnation	p. 68
Christ's sacrifice and his mediatory role	p. 83
Soteriology and eschatology: the subjective side of salvation	p. 97
Conclusion	p. 103
Trinity and Revelation	p. 106
The Trinitarian form of revelation	p. 106
God's invisibility and his unknowability in revelation	p. 107
The transition to the inner-life of the Trinity	p. 112
Wisdom and the identity between revealer and revelation	p. 117
The rule 'God from God'	p. 120
Conclusion	p. 123
The Holy Spirit and the Inner-Life of the Trinity	p. 125
Christology and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit	p. 125
The Holy Spirit and the unity of the Trinity	p. 129
The Holy Spirit and the 'order' of the Trinity	p. 133
The identity and the property of the Holy Spirit	p. 135
The inner-Trinitarian origin of the Holy Spirit	p. 139
The father, origin of the inner-life of the Trinity	p. 144
Trinity and Ontology	p. 147
Ontological categories and Trinitarian theology	p. 148
Criticism of substance and person	p. 154
An ontological bent in Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity?	p. 158
Augustine's real understanding of the inner-life of the Trinity	p. 161
Love and Knowledge of God	p. 170
Love and knowledge of God as truth	p. 170
Love and knowledge of objects of belief	p. 176
Love and knowledge of the Trinity	p. 180
Love of love itself	p. 184
The theological roots of the argument of book 8	p. 186
Knowledge and its Paradoxes	p. 190
Knowledge from the senses	p. 190
Illumination	p. 193
Intellectual knowledge	p. 198
The mind	p. 205
Love's misleading power	p. 207
Self-charity and epistemology	p. 213
The genesis of self-alienation	p. 216
Wisdom or Augustine's Ideal of Philosophy	p. 219
Science and wisdom	p. 221
Philosophy as worship	p. 227
The Image of God	p. 232
The characteristics of the image	p. 232
Augustine's doctrine of creation	p. 239
Platonic participation and Augustine's understanding of created being	p. 259
The image in Plotinus and Marius Victorinus	p. 269
The image in the De Trinitate	p. 275
Conclusion: The Primacy of Love	p. 298
Bibliography	p. 303
Index Locorum	p. 320
Index of Names	p. 327
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