Augustine's Psychological Image of the Trinity

Here is a small introduction to Augustine's famous psychological analogy from Book IX of "On the Trinity."

After eight books of theological exegesis, Augustine turns to a new question: can we discern a created image of the trinity to help us know God? And that he begins to do in Book IX of his On the Trinity because he discovers that being created in the image of God, we ourselves have "a certain image of the trinity."

So it is, in Book IX, that Augustine introduces the idea of an image of a trinity found within our mind. As he explores our "inner man," he wants to explain how our mind, understanding, and will relate to one another and yet are one substantially.

He speaks of the mind knowing itself with appetite or inquisitiveness. When the mind knows itself, it then begets knowledge of itself (i.e., a mental Word). And when inquisitiveness or appetite for knowledge gains that knowledge, it embraces the thing known or begotten as love, and unites the begetter and the begotten. Augustine calls this "a certain image of the trinity" (IX.3.18, p 285). Mind images the Father, begotten knowledge the Son, and love the Spirit.

Two Important Qualifications

To understand this argument, we need to understand two important qualifications. First, Augustine believes our created, temporal, and mutable rational mind images an ideal image of a rational mind. So we are not exploring the "inner man" as the "inner man" but the inner man as a sign of something more perfect. Our mind, knowledge, and will are signposts of an ideal rational mind.

Second, Augustine sees inquisitiveness or appetite as a precursor to love; and he sees the appetite to understand as a precursor to knowledge conceived or begotten in mind. This will be important later since when Augustine considers God as God, he will deny precursors in God that led to the Word and Love of God. God always actualizes self-knowledge as Word and always loves the Word begotten from Himself. So mind (later, memory), understanding (Word), and love (Spirit) are always actualized potencies in God which can both be said relatively of each but also remain one substance—the life that God is.

The Setup for Books X and XI

Most of this is a set up for the discussions in Books X and XI. In Book X, Augustine explores more fully how love as the Spirit works in this image of the trinity. Book XI comes to certain conclusions about what kind of knowledge Augustine has in mind (self-knowledge, not just knowledge in general).

Augustine's Key Explanation

In Book IX, the most clarifying text comes at the very end of the book where Augustine explains:

"But the reason it is not right to say that love is begotten by knowledge of itself by which it knows itself, is that knowledge is a kind of finding out what is said to be brought forth or brought to light, which is often preceded by an inquisitiveness that is going to rest in that end. Inquisitiveness is an appetite for finding out, which amounts to the same thing as 'bringing to light.' But things that are brought to light are so to speak brought forth, which makes them similar to offspring. And where does all this happen but in knowledge? It is there that they are as it were squeezed out and formed. Even if the things we have found out by inquiry already existed, still knowledge of them did not yet exist, and it is out by we reckon as the offspring coming to birth.

Now this appetite shown in inquiring proceeds from the inquirer, and it is left somewhat hanging in the air and does not rest assuaged in the end it is stretching out to, until what is being looked for has been found and is coupled with the inquirer. This appetite, that is inquisitiveness, does not indeed appear to be the love with which what is known is loved (this is still busy getting known), yet it is something of the same kind. It can already be called will because everyone who inquires wants to find out, and if what is being inquired about belongs to knowledge then everyone who inquires wants to know. If he urgently and passionately wants to know he is said to be studious, a term which is commonly used about the pursuit and acquisition of various kinds of learning.

So parturition by the mind is preceded by a kind of appetite which prompts us to inquire and find out about what we want to know, and as a result knowledge itself is brought forth as offspring; and hence the appetite itself by which knowledge is conceived and brought forth cannot appropriately itself be called brood or offspring. The same appetite with which one longs open-mouthed to know a thing becomes love of the thing known when it holds and embraces the acceptable offspring, that is knowledge, and joins it to its begetter. And so you have a certain image of the trinity, the mind itself and its knowledge, which is its offspring and its word about itself, and love as the third element, and these three are one (1 Jn 5:8) and are one substance. Nor is the offspring less than the mind so long as the mind knows itself as much as it is, nor is love any less so long as it loves itself as much as it knows and as much as it is." (IX.3.18, p 284–5).

Here we can see Augustine’s famous psychological Trinity in basic form. He will develop it further with some refinements, but the major ideas appear here.

Within us, we can see an imperfect image of an ideal rational mind. As we know ourselves, we beget knowledge itself; as we want to know ourselves, we have an inquisitiveness for what we want to know. And so we can speak of an internal word (knowledge) begotten of mind, and the appetite that, when it achieves what it wants (knowledge), cherishes what it wanted under the form of love. This love moves from the begetter to the begotten knowledge, a sort of bond of love between the two.

In God, we cannot speak of time or movement but only of the Word begotten and the Love of God common to Father, Son, and Spirit by the Spirit who proceeds according to will.

Much more could be said here, and I plan to say it in my upcoming course at the Davenant Institute on Augustine’s On the Trinity.