This is a substantial study of one of Augustine's most weighty and innovative works (he once called it opus tam laboriosum), and one less well known than Confessions and City of God. As Rowan Williams says in his short welcoming and contextualising preface, ‘many of the essays here will require some textbook summaries of Augustine as a philosopher to be extensively rewritten’. Indeed it is a veritable Companion, albeit in some places like a companion who insists that one puts on the crampons of logic and bivouacs in the crevices of ancient philosophy as we climb; it is certainly not a walk in the park. But the ‘Introduction: exégèse, logique et noétique’ by B. is a helpful summary of the work, showing where the sixteen essays that follow – nine in English and seven in French – fit in. Here I give details of all the titles, with short comments as dictated by the word-limit and my own limited equipment for such ascents.
In ‘How to Refute an Arian: Ambrose and Augustine’ M. Edwards compares the debates conducted with Arians over the nature of Christ by Ambrose and Augustine in order to find what is new and characteristic of Augustine in his arguments and to note the effect of his rather different circumstances.
In ‘L'exégèse de la théophanie de Mambré dans le De Trinitate d’ Augustin: enjeux et ruptures' M.-O. Boulnois examines Augustine's discussion of the Old Testament theophany to Abraham at Mamre, which Arian opponents had interpreted as a proof of the inferiority of the Son. Augustine is seen to break with traditional exegesis in some significant ways.
In ‘La puissance de Dieu à l'oeuvre dans le monde. Le livre III du De Trinitate d'Augustin’ I. Bochet explains the function of this apparently neglected book in the argument of Books 1–4, explores the relation of the argument to Augustine's discussions of God's creative power in his commentary De Genesi ad litteram, and argues that one point of his polemic against Porphyry in Books 3 and 4 is to distance himself from this writer.
In ‘Augustine's Use of Aristotle's Categories in De Trinitate in Light of the History of the Latin Text of the Categories Before Boethius’ J. Lössl presents a thorough study of various Late Antique Latin versions of the Categories, based on the terminology used and the order in which various witnesses present the ten categories. In whatever version, Augustine makes more use of it in De Trinitate (Book 5) than his words in Confessions 4.16.28 might suggest.
In ‘The Semantics of Augustine's Trinitarian Analysis in De Trinitate 5–7’ P. King asserts that Augustine's crowning achievement in De Trinitate is his distinction between substantial and relational predication – an achievement little appreciated because his medieval successors (Boethius among them) chose to concentrate on his metaphysics rather than his semantic approach in these books.
In ‘A Problem in Augustine's Use of the Category of Relation in De Trinitate V and VII’ O'D. expounds difficulties inherent in the question of the relation of the three persons of the Trinity, and considers whether Plotinus should be called to the rescue. Concluding, he declares that ‘perhaps Augustine could not succeed in applying logical categories to Trinitarian mystery: but at least he tried’.
In ‘La divisibilité de l'espèce selon Augustin De Trinitate VII’ C. Erismann begins by seeking to clarify what is understood by ‘ontology’ in exegesis of De Trinitate, and then reconstructs the Augustinian theory of species as applied to the sensible world. This shows Augustine moving away from Aristotle and distinct from ‘realists’ such as Gregory of Nyssa, and taking an original metaphysical position.
In ‘L'image de soi-même, la question du double sujet’ M. Smalbrugge, beginning from the famous phrase from Augustine's Soliloquia, deum et animam scire cupio, seeks to show how Augustine aimed to solve the problem by the notion of ‘image’, which Smalbrugge pursues first in the autobiographical works and then in De Trinitate.
In ‘Qu'il n'y a pas d'amour sans connaissance: étude d'un argument du De Trinitate, livres VIII–XV’ A.-I. Bouton-Touboulic explores the question of whether it is possible to love something which one does not know. This problem, already apparent to Augustine in his Soliloquia, is examined from various angles in this paper, which also refers to earlier philosophers and schools.
In ‘Augustine's Theory of Mind and Self-Knowledge: Some Fundamental Problems’ C. Horn finds ‘serious shortcomings’ in Augustine's philosophy of mind as developed in the second half of De Trinitate, which result from his strategy of using as his basis Trinitarian dogma as established in the fourth-century councils.
In ‘Time, Memory, and Selfhood in De Trinitate’ J. Brachtendorf discusses Augustine's distinction between se cogitare and se nosse, and then focuses on one element of the latter, the memoria sui interior; this concept in Book 14 is compared with other passages of Augustine, including those in Confessions 10 and 11.
In ‘Augustine's Cognitive Voluntarism in De Trinitate 11’ S. MacDonald addresses the problem that Augustine seems to go too far in making an act of will an essential part of every cognitive act. He suggests two strategies for defending Augustine's account, offers a brief objection and then makes a reply to it.
In ‘The Background of Augustine's Triadic Epistemology in De Trinitate 11–15. A suggestion’ C. Tornau inquires into the historical background of Augustine's ‘triadic epistemology’, as it is presented in Book 11, delving into Aristotle and Plotinus among others. Cross-references to some other papers in this volume might have been useful.
In ‘Trinitas Fidei. Sur les apports de la méthode analogique trinitaire à la définition de la croyance (Augustin, De Trin. XIII)’ I. Koch examines how Augustine's treatment of the notion of fides (in the sense of ‘croyance’) differs markedly, in the Trinitarian context, from earlier analyses by him. He abandons the approach of listing the conditions of belief for the attempt to describe what happens in the mind of one who believes.
In ‘La mens-imago et la “mémoire métaphysique” dans la réflexion trinitaire de saint Augustin’ B. Cillerai, working from the studies of memory by Goulven Madec, discusses various questions surrounding Augustine's treatment of the concept, fundamental as it is among the various ‘psychological trinities’ of the later books. The influence of Plotinus is also examined.
In ‘Intellectual Self-Knowledge in Augustine (De Trinitate 14.7–14)’, a lively paper which rounds off this challenging but illuminating collection, C. Brittain asks ‘what exactly does Augustine mean when he says that the mens always remembers itself, always knows itself …?’
There are indexes of Biblical passages, of passages of Augustine referred to, of references to ancient and medieval writers (but no index of subjects) and an extensive bibliography. The work is produced with the clarity and elegance characteristic of the ‘Collection des Études Augustiniennes’, though in one section of mild typographical turbulence early on I noticed ‘nostril’ for nostri and ‘affect’ for affectu, and elsewhere (on a single occasion in each case) that Augustine loses an ‘i’ and the Latin word intentio a ‘t’. About one half of the contributors do not regularly provide the Latin of important passages discussed.
