On the Trinity 12.14–13.4

For knowledge too has its own good measure, if what in it puffs up, or tends to puff up, is overcome by the love of eternal things, which does not puff up but, as we know, builds up. For without knowledge not even the virtues themselves, by which one lives rightly, can be had, by which this miserable life is so governed that one may arrive at that eternal life which is truly happy. Yet the action by which we use temporal things well differs from the contemplation of eternal things, and the latter is assigned to wisdom, the former to knowledge. For although that which is wisdom can also be called knowledge, as the apostle too speaks where he says, “Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known,” by which knowledge he certainly means that of the contemplation of God, which will be the highest reward of the saints; yet where he says, “To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit,” he certainly distinguishes these two without doubt, although he does not explain there what the difference is, and by what each can be recognized. But having searched the manifold wealth of the holy Scriptures, I find it written in the book of Job, the same holy man speaking: “Behold, godliness is wisdom; and to abstain from evil is knowledge.” In this difference it is to be understood that wisdom belongs to contemplation, knowledge to action. For in this place he put godliness for the worship of God, which in Greek is called θεοσέβεια. For this is the word this sentence has in the Greek manuscripts. And what is more excellent among eternal things than God, whose nature alone is unchangeable? And what is his worship but the love of him, by which we now desire to see him, and believe and hope that we shall see him; and, as far as we make progress, we see now through a mirror in an enigma, but then in manifestation? For this is what the apostle Paul says, “face to face”; this too is what John says, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be; we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Discourse about these and suchlike things seems to me to be the very word of wisdom. But to abstain from evil, which Job said is knowledge, is without doubt a matter of temporal things. For in time we are among evils, from which we ought to abstain so that we may come to those eternal goods. Therefore whatever we do prudently, courageously, temperately, and justly belongs to that knowledge or discipline in which our action is engaged in avoiding evils and seeking goods; and so does whatever we gather by historical knowledge for the sake of examples to be avoided or imitated, and for the necessary proofs of any things suited to our uses. When discourse is about these things, I think it the word of knowledge, to be distinguished from the word of wisdom, to which belong those things which neither have been nor will be, but are, and because of that eternity in which they are, they are said to have been and to be and to be going to be, without any changeableness of times. For they did not so exist as to cease to be, nor are they going to be as though they were not now; but they have always had, and will always have, that very being. And they remain, not as bodies fixed in spaces of places, but in an incorporeal nature they are present as intelligible things to the gaze of the mind, as these visible or tangible things in places are to the senses of the body. And not only do the intelligible and incorporeal reasons of sensible things placed in space remain without spatial extension, but also the reasons of motions that pass in time stand without temporal passing, they too certainly intelligible, not sensible. To attain to them with the gaze of the mind is for few; and when they are attained, as far as can be, the one who attains them does not remain in them, but, his very gaze as it were beaten back, he is driven away, and there comes about a transitory thought of a thing that is not transitory. Yet this thought, passing through the disciplines by which the mind is instructed, is committed to memory, so that the mind, which is compelled to pass on from there, may have somewhere to return; although, if the thought did not return to the memory and find there what it had committed to it, it would be led to it like a beginner, as it had been led before, and would find it where it had first found it, namely in that incorporeal truth, from which it would again be fixed in the memory as if written down. For a man's thought does not remain in it in the way that, for example, the incorporeal and unchangeable reason of a square body remains; if indeed it has been able to reach it without the image of spatial extension. Or if the rhythm of some artful and musical sound passing through stretches of time is grasped, standing without time in a kind of secret and deep silence, it can at least be thought of as long as that song can be heard; yet what the gaze of the mind, even passing, has snatched from there and, as if swallowing it into the stomach, has stored in the memory, it will be able in a way to ruminate by recollecting, and to transfer what it has so learned into a discipline. But if it has been wiped out by complete forgetfulness, one will come again, under the guidance of teaching, to what had fallen away entirely, and it will be found as it was.

Hence that noble philosopher Plato tried to persuade us that the souls of men lived here even before they bore these bodies, and that this is why the things that are learned are remembered as already known rather than known as new. For he related that a certain boy, questioned about some matters of geometry, answered as though he were very skilled in that discipline. For, questioned step by step and skillfully, he saw what was to be seen and said what he had seen. But if this were the recollection of things previously known, then certainly not all, or almost all, could do this when questioned in that way. For not all were geometers in a former life, since geometers are so rare in the human race that one can scarcely be found. Rather, it is to be believed that the nature of the intellectual mind has been so made that, joined by the natural order arranged by the Creator to intelligible things, it sees them in a certain incorporeal light of its own kind, as the eye of the flesh sees the things that lie round about in this bodily light, of which it was created capable and to which it is suited. For it is not because the eye too had already known white and black before it was created in this flesh that it distinguishes them without a teacher. Lastly, why is it only about intelligible things that it can happen that anyone well questioned answers what belongs to each discipline, even if he is ignorant of it? Why can no one do this about sensible things, except those which he has seen while placed in this body, or which he has believed from those who knew them and told him, whether by their writings or by their words? For we must not agree with those who say that Pythagoras of Samos remembered some such things which he had experienced when he had been here before in another body; and others tell of some others who underwent something of this kind in their minds. That these were false memories, such as we often experience in dreams, when we seem to remember having done or seen what we neither did nor saw at all, and that the minds of those men, even awake, were affected in this way at the prompting of malignant and deceitful spirits, whose concern it is to confirm or sow a false opinion about the transmigration of souls in order to deceive men, can be inferred from this: if they truly remembered the things they had seen here when placed before in other bodies, it would happen to many, indeed to almost all; since they suppose that, as the dead come from the living, so the living come from the dead, as sleepers from the waking and the waking from sleepers, without ceasing. If, then, this is the right distinction between wisdom and knowledge, that the intellectual knowledge of eternal things belongs to wisdom and the rational knowledge of temporal things to knowledge, it is not difficult to judge which is to be preferred or placed after which. And if some other distinction is to be used by which these two may be recognized, which the apostle without doubt teaches are different when he says, “To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit,” yet the difference between these two which we have set down is most evident, that the intellectual knowledge of eternal things is one thing, the rational knowledge of temporal things another, and no one doubts that the former is to be preferred to the latter. As we leave behind, then, the things that belong to the outer man, and desire to ascend inward from the things we have in common with the beasts, before we come to the knowledge of intelligible and highest things, which are eternal, the rational knowledge of temporal things meets us. In this too, then, let us find, if we can, some trinity, as we found it in the senses of the body and in the things which have entered through them into our soul or spirit by way of images; so that, in place of the bodily things which we touch, placed outside, with the bodily sense, we had within the likenesses of bodies impressed on the memory, from which thought was formed, with the will as the third joining the two; just as the gaze of the eyes was formed outside, which the will applied to the visible thing so that vision came about, and joined the two, there too applying itself as the third. But this must not be crowded into this book, so that in the one that follows, if God helps, it can be fittingly examined, and what is found can be explained.

In the previous book of this work, the twelfth, we did enough to distinguish the function of the rational mind in temporal things, in which not only our knowing but also our acting is engaged, from the more excellent function of the same mind, which is spent on contemplating eternal things and is bounded by knowing alone. But I think it will be more convenient to insert something from the holy Scriptures, by which both may more easily be recognized. John the evangelist began his Gospel thus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name; who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we saw his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” All this which I have quoted from the Gospel has, in its earlier parts, what is unchangeable and eternal, the contemplation of which makes us happy; but in the parts that follow, eternal things are mentioned mixed with temporal. And for this reason some things there belong to knowledge and some to wisdom, according to the distinction we made earlier in the twelfth book. For “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. What was made was life in him, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it” requires the contemplative life and is to be beheld by the intellectual mind. In this, the more anyone has made progress, the wiser he will without doubt become. But because of what it says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it,” faith was certainly needed, by which what was not seen might be believed. For by darkness he meant the hearts of mortals, turned away from such light and less fit to behold it; for which reason he adds and says, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him.” This was now done in time, and it belongs to knowledge, which is contained in historical knowing. And we think of the man John by means of an image which is impressed on our memory from the knowledge of human nature. And those who do not believe these things think of it in the same way as those who do believe. For to both it is known what a man is; his outer part, that is, the body, they have learned through the eyes of the body; but his inner part, that is, the soul, they hold as known in themselves, because they too are men, and through human intercourse; so that they can think of what is said, “There was a man whose name was John,” because they also know names by speaking and hearing. But what is said there, “sent from God,” those who hold it hold by faith; and those who do not hold it by faith either waver in doubt or mock in unbelief. Yet both, unless they are of the number of the excessively foolish who say in their heart, “There is no God,” on hearing these words think of both things, what God is and what it is to be sent from God; and if not as the things really are, at least as they are able. Now faith itself, which each person sees to be in his heart if he believes, or not to be if he does not believe, we know in another way: not as the bodies which we see with bodily eyes, and of which, even when absent, we think through their images which we hold in memory; nor as the things we have not seen, which we form in some way in thought from those we have seen, and commit to memory, so that we may run back to them when we wish, in order to see there by recollection, in like manner, them, or rather whatever images of them we have fixed there; nor as a living man, whose soul, even if we do not see it, we infer from our own, and whom, as living, from his bodily motions, as we have learned by seeing, we behold also in thinking. Not so is faith seen in the heart in which it is, by him whose it is; but the most certain knowledge holds it, and conscience proclaims it. Although, then, we are commanded to believe precisely because we cannot see what we are commanded to believe, yet faith itself, when it is in us, we see in us; because the faith of absent things is present, and the faith of things that are outside is inside, and the faith of things that are not seen is seen; and yet it comes about in time in the hearts of men; and if from believers they become unbelievers, it perishes from them. And sometimes faith is given even to false things; for we speak in such a way as to say, “Faith was placed in him, and he deceived.” Such faith, if indeed it too is to be called faith, perishes from hearts without blame when truth, once found, drives it out. But faith in true things passes, as is to be desired, into those very things. For it is not to be said that it perishes when the things that were believed are seen. For is it still to be called faith, since faith is defined in the Letter to the Hebrews, where it is said to be the conviction of things that are not seen? Next, what follows, “He came for a testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him,” is, as we have said, a temporal action. For testimony is borne in time even about an eternal thing, which is the intelligible light. To bear witness to it came John, who was not the light but came to bear witness to the light. For he adds, “That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.” All these words those who know the Latin language understand from things they know. Some of these have become known to us through the senses of the body, as man, as the world itself, whose greatness we see so plainly, as the sounds of these same words, for hearing too is a sense of the body; others through the reason of the mind, as what was said, “And his own did not receive him”; for it is understood, “They did not believe in him,” and what that is we have come to know by no sense of the body but by the reason of the mind. Of the words themselves too we have learned not the sounds but the meanings, partly through the sense of the body, partly through the reason of the mind. Nor have we heard these words now for the first time; but they are words we had heard already; and not only the words themselves but also what they meant we held as known in memory, and recognized here. For when this two-syllable word, mundus (“world”), is spoken, since it is a sound, a bodily thing has certainly become known through the body, that is, through the ear; but what it means has also become known through the body, that is, through the eyes of the flesh. For the world, as far as it is known, is known to those who see. But this four-syllable word, crediderunt (“they believed”), by its sound, since that is a body, slips in through the ear of the flesh; but what it means is known by no sense of the body but by the reason of the mind. For unless we knew through the mind what “they believed” is, we would not understand what those failed to do of whom it is said, “And his own did not receive him.” The sound of the word, then, resounds from outside on the ears of the body and reaches the sense which is called hearing. The appearance of a man, too, is both known to us in ourselves and is present from outside to the senses of the body in others: to the eyes, when he is seen; to the ears, when he is heard; to touch, when he is held and touched; it also has in our memory an image, bodily indeed, but its own, like a body. Finally, the wonderful beauty of the world itself is present from outside both to our gaze and to the sense called touch, if we touch any of it; it too has its own image within, in our memory, to which we run back when we think of it, either shut within walls or even in darkness. But of these images of bodily things, which are not bodies yet have likenesses of bodies and belong to the life of the outer man, we have spoken enough in the eleventh book. Now, however, we are dealing with the inner man and his knowledge, the knowledge which is of temporal and changeable things; into whose purpose, when something is taken up even from things that belong to the outer man, it must be taken up so that something may be taught from it that helps rational knowledge; and so the rational use of the things we have in common with irrational animals belongs to the inner man, and it cannot rightly be said to be common to us with the irrational animals.

But faith, about which the plan of our arrangement compels us to argue somewhat at length in this book, which those who have it are called faithful, and those who do not, unfaithful, like those who did not receive the Son of God coming to his own, although it has come about in us by hearing, nevertheless does not belong to that sense of the body which is called hearing, since it is not a sound; nor to the eyes of this flesh, since it is not color or bodily form; nor to that which is called touch, since it has nothing of bulk; nor to any sense of the body at all, since this is a thing of the heart, not of the body; nor is it outside us, but in our inmost parts; nor does any human being see it in another, but each in himself. Finally, it can even be feigned by pretense, and be thought to be in one in whom it is not. Each, then, sees his own faith in himself; but in another he believes it to be, he does not see it; and he believes it the more firmly the more he knows its fruits, which faith is wont to work through love. Therefore this faith is common to all those of whom the evangelist adds and says, “But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”: not as some bodily form is common, to be seen by the eyes of all to whom it is present, for the gaze of all who see it is in some way informed by that one form; but as a human face can be said to be common to all men; for this is said in such a way that each nevertheless has his own. We say most truly that the faith of believers is impressed from one teaching on the hearts of each of those who believe the same thing; but the things that are believed are one thing, the faith by which they are believed another. For the former are among the things which are said to be, or to have been, or to be going to be; but the latter is in the mind of the believer, visible only to him whose it is; although it is also in others, not the same faith but a like one. For it is one not in number but in kind; yet because of the likeness and the absence of any difference we rather say it is one than many. For when we see two men who are very alike, we say that both have one face, and we wonder. So it is more easily said that there were many souls, each one, of course, belonging to each person, of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles that they had one soul, than that anyone should dare to say, where the apostle said “one faith,” that there are as many faiths as faithful. And yet he who says, “O woman, great is your faith,” and to another, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” signifies that each has his own. But the same faith of believers is called one in the same way as the same will of those who will is called one; since even in those who will the same thing, each one's own will is visible to him, while the other's is hidden, although he wills the same; and if it shows itself by some signs, it is believed rather than seen. But each, conscious of his own mind, certainly does not believe but plainly sees that this is his own will.

There is indeed such agreement in the same nature, living and using reason, that, although what one wills is hidden from another, there are nevertheless some wills of all which are known even to each; and although each human being does not know what one other human being wills, in certain matters he can know what all will. Hence the very witty urbanity of a certain mime is celebrated, who, having promised in the theater that at another show he would tell what all had in mind and what they all willed, when on the appointed day a greater crowd flocked together in huge expectation, all in suspense and silent, is reported to have said: “You want to buy cheap and sell dear.” In this saying of a most frivolous actor all nevertheless found their own consciences, and they applauded with wonderful favor the man who set before the eyes of all what was true and yet unexpected. But why was so great an expectation aroused when he promised to tell the will of all, unless because the wills of other men are hidden from a man? But was this hidden from him? Is it hidden from anyone? For what reason, then, unless because there are some things which each may not unfittingly infer in others from himself, through a shared vice or nature? But it is one thing to see one's own will, another to infer another's, though by the most certain inference. For I hold it as certain, in human affairs, that Rome was founded as that Constantinople was, although I have seen Rome with my own eyes, whereas of Constantinople I know nothing except what I have believed from other witnesses. And that mime, indeed, either by looking at himself or also by experience of others, believed that to want to buy cheap and sell dear was common to all. But since it is truly a vice, anyone can acquire the justice opposed to it, or fall into the plague of some other vice which is contrary to it, by which he resists and overcomes it. For I myself know a man who, when a manuscript was offered to him for sale and he saw that the seller was ignorant of its price and therefore asked something very small, gave him, to his surprise, the just price, which was much greater. What if someone were possessed by such wickedness that he sold cheap what his parents left him and bought dear what his lusts consumed? Such extravagance is not, I think, incredible; and if such people are sought, they will be found, or perhaps they will turn up even without being sought, who, with a wickedness greater than that of the theater, mock the theatrical proposition or pronouncement, buying debaucheries at a high price and selling their estates at a low one. We know too of some who, for the sake of largess, bought grain dear and sold it more cheaply to their fellow citizens. And what the old poet Ennius said, “All mortals desire to be praised,” he certainly inferred in others both from himself and from those he had experienced, and he seems to have pronounced the will of all men. Finally, if that mime too had said, “You all want to be praised; none of you wants to be blamed,” he would similarly have seemed to say what was the will of all. Yet there are some who hate their own vices, and who are displeased with themselves in those things and do not want to be praised by others for them, and who thank the kindness of those who rebuke them, when they are blamed so that they may be corrected. But if he had said, “You all want to be happy; you do not want to be wretched,” he would have said something which no one would fail to recognize in his own will. For whatever else anyone may secretly will, he does not depart from this will which is well enough known to all and in all men.

But it is a wonder, since the will to obtain and keep happiness is one in all, from where there arises in turn so great a variety and diversity of wills about happiness itself; not that anyone does not want it, but that not all know it. For if all knew it, it would not be thought by some to be in virtue of mind, by others in pleasure of body, by others in both, and by others in this or that place. For as each thing especially delighted them, so they set the happy life in it. How, then, do all most ardently love what not all know? Who can love what he does not know? as I have already argued about this in earlier books. Why, then, is happiness loved by all and yet not known by all? Or perhaps all know what it is, but not all know where it is, and that is the source of the dispute? As if it were a question of some place in this world where everyone who wants to live happily ought to want to live, and not that it is asked where happiness is in the same way as what it is. For certainly, if it is in pleasure of the body, he is happy who enjoys pleasure of the body; if in virtue of mind, he who enjoys this; if in both, he who enjoys both. When, therefore, one says, “To live happily is to enjoy pleasure of the body,” and another says, “To live happily is to enjoy virtue of mind,” do not either both not know what the happy life is, or not both know it? How then do both love it, if no one can love what he does not know? Or perhaps what we laid down as most true and most certain, that all men want to live happily, is false? For if to live happily is, for example, to live according to virtue of mind, how does one who does not want this want to live happily? Would we not more truly say, “This man does not want to live happily, because he does not want to live according to virtue, which alone is to live happily”? Not all, then, want to live happily; indeed few want it, if to live happily is nothing but to live according to virtue of mind, which many do not want. Will that, then, be false, which not even Cicero himself, the Academic, doubted (though to the Academics everything is doubtful), who, when in the dialogue Hortensius he wanted to take the beginning of his argument from some certain thing about which no one would doubt, said, “We certainly all want to be happy”? God forbid that we should say this is false. What then? Must it be said that, even if to live happily is nothing else than to live according to virtue of mind, yet even one who does not want this wants to live happily? This indeed seems too absurd. For it is as if we said, “Even one who does not want to live happily wants to live happily.” Who would listen to such a contradiction, who would bear it? And yet necessity drives us to it, if it is both true that all want to live happily and that not all want to live in the way in which alone one lives happily.