Vigils Reading – St Augustine

THE TRINITY OF THE MIND

From a treatise by St Augustine1

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Now this trinity of the mind is the image of God, not because the mind

remembers, understands, and loves itself, but because it also has the power to

remember, understand, and love its Maker. And in doing this it attains wisdom.

If it does not do this, the memory, understanding and love of itself is no more

than an act of folly. Therefore, let the mind remember its God, to whose image

it was made, let it understand and love Him.

In brief, let it worship the uncreated God who created it with the capacity

for himself, and in whom it can be made partaker. Hence it is written: “Behold,

the worship of God is wisdom“. By participating in that supreme Light, wisdom

will belong to the mind not by its own light, and it will reign in bliss only where

the eternal Light is. The wisdom is so called human wisdom as to be also that of

God. If wisdom were only human, it would be vain, for only God’s wisdom is

true wisdom. Yet when we call it God’s wisdom, we do not mean the wisdom by

which God is wise: He is not wise by partaking in himself as the mind is wise by

partaking in God. It is more like speaking of the justice of God not only to mean

that God is just but to mean the justice he gives to us when he “justifies the

ungodly“: to which the Apostle alludes when speaking to those who “being

ignorant of God’s justice, and wanting to establish their own justice, were not

subject to the justice of God”. In this way we might speak of those who, ignorant

of the wisdom of God and wanting to establish their own, were not subject to

the wisdom of God.

There is an uncreated Being who has made all other beings great and

small, certainly more excellent than everything he made, and thus also more

excellent than the rational and intellectual being which we have been8

discussing, namely, the human mind, made to the image of its Creator. And the

Being more excellent than all others is God. Indeed, he is “not far from any one

of us,” as the Apostle says, adding, “for in him we live and move and have our

being“. Were this said in a material sense we could understand it of our material

world: for in it also, in respect to our body, we live and move and are. The text

should be taken, however, in a more excellent and also invisible and intelligible

way, namely, with respect to the mind that has been made to his image.

In fact, what is there that is not in him of whom Holy Scripture says: “For

from him and through him and in him are all things“? If all things are in Him, in

whom except in him in whom they are can the living live or the moving more? Yet

all are not with him in the sense in which he says “I am always with you”. Nor is

he with all things in the sense in which we say, “The Lord be with you.” Our great

misery, therefore, is not to be with him without whom we cannot exist.

Unquestionably, we are never without him in whom we are; but if one does not

remember him, does not understand him or love him, he is not with him.