On the Trinity

About this work

Not long after completing the Confessions, in which at one point he had outlined an analogy to trinitarian language in being, knowing, and willing, three aspects of one person, Augustine embarked on a large work De Trinitate. The first seven books record the teaching of Scripture and the traditional language of Latin theology since Tertullian. From book 8 to the end in book 15 he develops the psychological analogy sketched in the Confessions, but with deeper elaboration.

Henry Chadwick, “Augustine,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 335–36.