On the Trinity, Book 14

We must now discuss wisdom; not God’s wisdom, which is undoubtedly God, for His only-begotten Son is called God’s wisdom; we will discuss human wisdom, but true wisdom, which accords with God and is His true and highest worship, called in Greek by the single term θεοσέβεια. As we have already noted, Latin speakers wanting to translate this with a single term rendered it piety, although piety more commonly means what the Greeks call εὐσέβεια. But because θεοσέβεια cannot be perfectly translated by one word, it is better translated in Latin by two words meaning “the worship of God.” That this is human wisdom, as we stated in Book 12 of this work, is shown by Scripture’s authority in the book of God’s servant Job, where we read that God’s Wisdom said to humanity, “Look, piety is wisdom, and turning away from evil is knowledge;” or, as some translate the Greek word ἐπιστήμην, “learning,” called disciplina in Latin from discere, to learn, and therefore also called knowledge. Everything is learned so that it may be known. The same word, however, is used in a different sense, discipline, when someone suffers evils for sins in order to be corrected. This is the meaning in the letter to the Hebrews, “For what son is there whose father does not discipline him?” The same letter makes it still clearer: “No discipline seems joyful at the time, but painful; afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those trained through it.” God Himself is therefore the highest wisdom; but worshiping God is the human wisdom we are now discussing. For “this world’s wisdom is foolishness with God.” Concerning this wisdom, the worship of God, Scripture therefore says, “A multitude of wise people is the world’s health.” But if discussing wisdom belongs to the wise, what should we do? Will we dare claim wisdom to keep our discussion of it from being merely presumptuous? Will Pythagoras’s example not alarm us? He dared not claim to be wise, but answered that he was a philosopher, a lover of wisdom; this is where the name arose, and it became so popular among later generations that however greatly someone seemed, to themselves or others, to excel in learning about wisdom, they were still called only a philosopher. Or did none of these people dare claim to be wise because they thought a wise person had no sin? Our Scriptures do not say this, for they say, “Correct a wise person, and he will love you.” Anyone judging that a person needs correction certainly judges that person to have sin. For my part, however, I dare not claim to be wise even in this sense; I am content with what they themselves cannot deny: discussing wisdom also belongs to the philosopher, the lover of wisdom. Those claiming to love wisdom rather than to be wise have not stopped discussing it. In discussing wisdom, they defined it this way: Wisdom is knowledge of human and divine things. Thus in the previous book I acknowledged that understanding both divine and human things can be called either knowledge or wisdom. But according to the distinction in the apostle’s words, “To one the word of wisdom is given, to another the word of knowledge,” this definition must be divided, so that understanding divine things is properly called wisdom, and understanding human things properly takes the name knowledge. I discussed the latter in Book 13, without assigning to this knowledge everything people can know about human things, where there is much pointless vanity and harmful curiosity, but only what gives birth to, nourishes, defends, and strengthens the most life-giving faith leading to true happiness. Most believers are not strong in this knowledge, however strong they are in faith itself. Knowing only what people should believe to attain a happy life, necessarily eternal, is one thing; knowing how this belief can help the faithful and be defended against the godless is another, and the apostle seems to give the latter the specific name knowledge. In discussing this knowledge earlier, I especially aimed to show faith’s value, first briefly distinguishing eternal from temporal things, then discussing temporal things there; while leaving eternal things for this book, I also showed that faith about eternal things is itself temporal and lives in believers’ hearts in time, yet is necessary for attaining eternal things themselves. I also argued that faith about the temporal things the eternal one did and suffered for us as man, in the humanity He bore in time and carried into eternity, also helps us attain eternal things; and that the virtues themselves, through which people live prudently, courageously, temperately, and justly in this temporal, mortal life, are true virtues only if directed toward this same faith, which, although temporal, leads to eternal things.

As it is written, “While we are in the body, we are away from the Lord; for we walk by faith rather than sight.” As long as the righteous person lives by faith, however they live according to the inner person, although seeking truth and reaching toward eternity through this same temporal faith, we have certainly not yet reached a trinity that should be called God’s image in retaining, contemplating, and loving this temporal faith; otherwise an image that should be established in eternal things would seem to be established in temporal things. When the human mind sees its own faith, through which it believes what it does not see, it does not see anything eternal. Faith will not last forever. It will certainly cease to exist when our pilgrimage away from God, requiring us to walk by faith, ends and gives way to the sight through which we will see face to face. Because we now believe without seeing, we will deserve to see and will rejoice that faith has brought us to sight. It will no longer be faith, through which unseen things are believed, but sight, through which things formerly believed are seen. Then, although we remember this mortal life now past, and recall that we once believed what we did not see, this faith will be counted among things past and finished, rather than things present and permanently enduring. The trinity now consisting in remembering, contemplating, and loving this present and continuing faith will therefore then be past and finished, rather than enduring. It follows that if this trinity is already God’s image, the image itself would have to be counted among passing things, rather than things existing forever.

We must never think that although the soul’s nature is immortal and never ceases to exist after it is first created, the best thing it possesses does not endure with its immortality forever. What is better in its created nature than being made in its Creator’s image? We must therefore find what should properly be called God’s image in what will exist forever, rather than in retaining, contemplating, and loving a faith that will not exist forever. Should we investigate more carefully and deeply whether this is really so? Someone might say that this trinity does not perish even when faith itself has passed away; just as we now retain it in memory, discern it in thought, and love it with our will, so then, when we retain in memory and recall that we once had it, and unite these two through a third, the will, the same trinity will remain. For if faith left no trace, so to speak, in passing through us, we would certainly have nothing of it even in memory to return to when recalling it as past, uniting these two through a third, intention: what was in our memory even when we were not thinking about it, and what is formed from it through thought. Someone saying this does not distinguish the trinity existing now, when we retain, see, and love our present faith within ourselves, from the trinity that will exist when we contemplate in recollection, rather than faith itself, something like its imagined trace stored in memory, and unite these two through the will as a third: what was in the memory of the person retaining it and what it impresses on the mind’s gaze in recollection. To understand this, let us take an example from physical things, which we discussed sufficiently in Book 11. As we ascend from lower to higher things or move inward from outer to inner things, we first find a trinity in the physical object seen, the observer’s gaze, which the object shapes when seen, and the will’s intention joining both. Let us set up a similar trinity: the faith now within us is established in our memory as that physical object was in its location, and this faith shapes our thought in recollection as the physical object shaped the observer’s gaze; to complete the trinity, the will is counted as a third with these two, connecting and joining the faith established in memory and something like its likeness impressed on the gaze in recollection; just as in that trinity of bodily vision, the will’s intention joins the visible object’s form with the corresponding form produced in the observer’s gaze. Suppose this visible object has dissolved and perished, and nothing of it remains anywhere for our gaze to return to; should we say that because the image of this now vanished physical object remains in memory, forming thought in recollection, with the will joining the two as a third, it is the same trinity as before, when the appearance of the physical object in its location was seen? Certainly not; it is entirely different: besides the former being external and the latter internal, the former was certainly produced by the appearance of a present physical object, the latter by an image of the object now past. Likewise in the matter we are now discussing, which this example was intended to illustrate, the faith now in our mind, as that physical object was in its location, produces a kind of trinity while retained, looked at, and loved; but this trinity will no longer exist when this faith is no longer in the mind, just as that object no longer exists in its location. The trinity then existing, when we remember that faith was once within us but is no longer, will certainly be different. The present trinity is produced by the thing itself, present and attached to the believer’s mind; the future trinity will be produced by the image of a past thing left in the recollecting person’s memory.

Neither the trinity that does not exist now nor the one that will not exist then is therefore God’s image; we must find in the human soul, the rational or intellectual soul, the Creator’s image, immortally implanted in the soul’s immortality. The soul’s immortality itself is spoken of with a qualification: the soul too has its own death when it lacks the happy life that should be called its true life; it is called immortal because it never ceases to live some kind of life, even when most miserable — similarly, although reason or intellect is sometimes dormant in it, sometimes apparently small and sometimes great, the human soul is always rational and intellectual. So if it is made in God’s image in this respect, that it can use reason and intellect to understand and see God, then from the moment this great and wonderful nature began to exist, whether this image is so worn away as almost to disappear, whether dark and disfigured or bright and beautiful, it certainly always exists. Pitying the disfigurement of its dignity, Scripture also tells us that “although a person walks in an image, he troubles himself in vain; he stores up riches without knowing for whom he will gather them.” Scripture would not attribute vanity to God’s image unless it saw that the image had been disfigured. Yet by saying the following, it sufficiently shows that this disfigurement does not destroy its being an image: “Although a person walks in an image.” This statement can therefore truthfully be expressed either way. Just as it says, “Although a person walks in an image, he troubles himself in vain,” so we can say, “Although a person troubles himself in vain, he walks in an image.” Although the soul’s nature is great, it could be corrupted because it is not the highest; although it could be corrupted because it is not the highest, it is a great nature because it has the capacity to receive and share in the highest nature. Let us therefore seek a trinity of its own kind in this image of God, with help from Him who made us in His own image. Only in this way can we investigate this subject beneficially and discover anything according to the wisdom that comes from Him. If readers retain in memory and recall what we said about the human soul or mind in earlier books, especially Book 10, or carefully reread the passages where it is written, they will not need a longer discussion here of the inquiry into this great subject. Among other things in Book 10, we said that the human mind knows itself. The mind knows nothing as well as what is present to it, and nothing is more present to the mind than itself. We also offered as much other evidence as seemed sufficient to prove this with complete certainty.

What, then, should we say about an infant’s mind, still so young and buried in such profound ignorance that a human mind knowing anything recoils from its darkness? Should we believe that this mind too knows itself, but is so intent on the things it has begun to perceive through bodily senses, taking greater delight the newer they are, that although it cannot be ignorant of itself, it cannot think about itself? How intensely it focuses on external objects of sense can be inferred from this fact alone: it is so eager to drink in this visible light that if someone, carelessly or without knowing the possible consequences, places a light at night where an infant lies, on the side toward which the lying child can turn its eyes but cannot turn its neck, the child’s gaze remains so fixed in that direction that we have known some to become cross-eyed through this, their eyes retaining the shape that habit somehow impressed on them while tender and soft. Infants’ souls likewise focus so narrowly, so to speak, on the other bodily senses, as far as their age permits, that they intensely reject or desire only what repels or attracts them through the body, without thinking about their own inner life or being able to be prompted to do so; they do not yet know the signs used to prompt them, chiefly words, of which, like other things, they are entirely ignorant. We have already shown in that same book that not knowing oneself differs from not thinking about oneself. Let us leave infancy aside, since infants cannot tell us what happens within them, and we ourselves have largely forgotten that age. It is enough to be certain of this: when someone becomes able to think about their own mind’s nature and discover the truth, they will find it within themselves alone. They will discover what they were not thinking about, rather than what they did not know. What do we know if we do not know what is in our own mind, when everything we know can be known only through the mind?

The power of thought is so great that even the mind itself can, so to speak, place itself before its own gaze only when it thinks about itself; nothing is before the mind’s gaze except what is being thought about, so that even the mind itself, through which we think everything we think, can be before its own gaze only by thinking about itself. But I cannot discover how it is absent from its own gaze when not thinking about itself, although it can never be without itself, as though it were one thing and its own gaze another. This is reasonably said of the bodily eye; the eye itself is fixed in its own place in the body, but its sight extends to external things, reaching even the stars. The eye is not within its own sight, since it sees itself only through a mirror, as discussed earlier; this certainly does not happen when the mind places itself before its own gaze by thinking about itself. Does the mind then see one part of itself through another when looking at itself in thought, as we look at some visible parts of our body with other parts, our eyes? What more absurd thing could be said or thought? Where is the mind taken from except itself? Where is it placed within its own gaze except before itself? Then it will no longer be where it was when absent from its own gaze, because it has been placed here after being removed from there. But if it moved away to be seen, where will it remain to do the seeing? Is it somehow doubled, present here and there simultaneously, both where it can see and where it can be seen, seeing within itself and visible before itself? Truth, when consulted, tells us none of this, since thinking this way involves only invented images of physical objects; the few minds capable of consulting truth on this subject are completely certain that the mind is nothing like these. It follows that the mind’s gaze belongs to its nature and is recalled to that nature when it thinks about itself, through a nonphysical turning rather than movement through space; when it is not thinking about itself, it is not before its own gaze, nor does it shape its own gaze, yet it knows itself as though it were its own memory of itself. It is like someone skilled in many subjects: what this person knows is contained in memory, but only what they are thinking about is before the mind’s gaze; everything else is stored in a kind of hidden knowledge called memory. We therefore presented the trinity this way: first, we placed in memory what shapes the thinking person’s gaze; next, the form itself, like an image impressed from memory; finally, love or will joining the two. When the mind sees itself in thought, it understands and recognizes itself; it therefore gives birth to this understanding and knowledge of itself. A nonphysical thing is seen when understood and known through understanding. Yet when the mind sees and understands itself in thought, it certainly does not give birth to this self-knowledge as though previously unknown to itself; it knew itself as things held in memory are known even when not being thought about; we say that someone knows letters even while thinking about something else rather than letters. These two, parent and offspring, are joined through love as a third, which is simply the will seeking or retaining something to enjoy. We therefore thought the mind’s trinity should also be indicated by these three terms: memory, understanding, and will. But as we said near the end of Book 10, the mind always remembers, understands, and loves itself, although not always thinking about itself as distinct from what it is not; we must ask how understanding (intellectus) belongs to thought, while the knowledge (notitia) of anything present in the mind, even when not being thought about, is said to belong to memory alone. If so, the mind did not have these three things: memory, understanding, and love of itself; it only remembered itself, and understood and loved itself afterward, when it began thinking about itself.

Let us therefore consider more carefully our example showing that not knowing something differs from not thinking [conceiving] about it; someone may know something they are not thinking about while thinking about something else. When someone skilled in two or more subjects thinks about one, they still know the other or others without thinking about them. Can we rightly say, This musician certainly knows music, but does not understand it now because he is not thinking about it; he does understand geometry now, because he is thinking about that? This statement seems absurd. What if we also said, This musician certainly knows music, but does not love it now while not thinking about it; he does love geometry now because he is thinking about that — is this not equally absurd? Yet we correctly say, This person you see discussing geometry is also an accomplished musician, for he remembers, understands, and loves music; although knowing and loving it, he is not thinking about it now, since he is thinking about the geometry he is discussing. This reminds us that we have knowledge of certain things stored in the mind’s hidden depths, which emerges, so to speak, into public view when thought about, placed openly before the mind’s gaze; the mind then discovers that it remembered, understood, and loved even what it was not thinking about while thinking about something else. But when we have not thought about something for a long time and cannot think about it without being reminded, we somehow, in a wonderful way I cannot explain, do not know that we know it, if that can be said. Someone reminding another can therefore rightly say, You know this, but you do not know that you know it; I will remind you, and you will discover that you know what you thought you did not know. Books do the same when written about things readers discover to be true under reason’s guidance; not things they believe on the writer’s authority, as when reading history, but things they themselves discover to be true, either within themselves or in the truth itself that guides the mind. Someone unable to see these things even when reminded is buried more deeply in ignorance’s darkness, through great blindness of heart, and needs more wonderful divine help to attain true wisdom. For this reason I wanted to offer some sort of illustration of thought, to show how what is held in memory shapes the mind’s eye in recollection, giving birth, when someone thinks, to something like what was already within them when they remembered before thinking; it is easier to distinguish what occurs successively in time, where the parent precedes the offspring by an interval. If we turn to the mind’s inner memory, through which it remembers itself, its inner understanding, through which it understands itself, and its inner will, through which it loves itself, where these three are always together and have always been together since they began to exist, whether thought about or not, the image of that Trinity will indeed seem to belong even to memory alone; but since a word here cannot exist without thought (we think everything we say, even through the inner word belonging to no particular language), this image should instead be recognized in these three: memory, understanding, and will. By understanding I now mean that through which we understand while thinking, when our thought is shaped by finding what was present to memory but was not being thought about; and I mean the will, love, or affection joining this offspring and parent, somehow common to both. This is why in Book 11 I also tried to guide slower readers through external objects of sense seen by bodily eyes; from there I entered with them into the inner person’s power of reasoning about temporal things, postponing consideration of the higher, ruling power through which that person contemplates eternal things. I did this in two books: in Book 12 I distinguished the two, one higher and the other lower, with the lower needing to be subject to the higher; in Book 13 I discussed, as truthfully and briefly as I could, the lower power’s function, which contains beneficial knowledge of human things, so that we may act in this temporal life in a way that attains eternal life. I briefly contained within one book this varied and extensive subject, made well known through many great discussions by many great thinkers, showing that it too contains a trinity, but not yet one that should be called God’s image.

We have now reached the discussion in which we set out to consider the human mind’s highest part, through which it knows or can know God, to find God’s image in it. Although the human mind does not have God’s nature, the image of that unsurpassable nature must be sought and found in what is also highest in our nature. But first we must consider the mind in itself before it shares in God, and find His image there. As we said, although worn away and disfigured through losing its share in God, it remains God’s image. It is His image precisely because it has the capacity to receive Him and can share in Him; this great good is possible only because it is His image. Here, then, the mind remembers, understands, and loves itself; if we see this, we see a trinity: not yet God Himself, but now God’s image. Memory has not received what it retains from outside; understanding has not found outside what it looks at, as the bodily eye does; nor has the will joined these two externally, as it joins a physical object’s form and the form produced from it in the observer’s gaze; nor has thought, in turning to it, found an image of something seen outside, somehow seized and stored in memory, from which the recollecting person’s gaze is formed, with the will joining the two as a third, as we showed happening in trinities found in physical things or somehow drawn inward from physical objects through bodily sense. We discussed all these in Book 11. Nor is it like what happened, or appeared to happen, when we went on to discuss knowledge already belonging to the inner person’s resources, which had to be distinguished from wisdom. The things known were, so to speak, additions to the mind, either brought there through historical knowledge — such as deeds and words enacted in time and passing away, or things established in nature in their own places and regions — or arising within the person where they did not exist before, through others’ teaching or personal thought — such as faith, whose value we discussed at length in Book 13, or the virtues, through which, if genuine, one lives well in this mortality in order to live happily in the immortality God promises. These and similar things have their own order in time, in which we more easily saw a trinity of memory, vision, and love. Some of these things precede learners’ knowledge. They are knowable before being known and give birth to knowledge of themselves in learners. They either exist in their own places or happened in the past; although past things no longer exist themselves, only certain signs of their past existence remain, whose sight or sound makes known that they existed and passed away. These signs are located either in the places themselves, like tombs and similar things; in trustworthy writings, like all serious history of recognized authority; or in the minds of people already knowing these things. What they already know is certainly knowable to others whose knowledge it has preceded, and who can learn it through the teaching of those who know it. When learned, all these things produce a kind of trinity: their own form, knowable before it was known, the learner’s knowledge joined to it, beginning to exist when the thing is learned, and the will joining both as a third. Once known, they produce another trinity when recalled, now inwardly in the mind itself, from the images impressed on memory when they were learned, the shaping of thought when recollection turns its gaze toward them, and the will joining these two as a third. Things arising in the mind where they did not exist before, such as faith and similar things, although apparently additions because implanted through teaching, are not located or enacted outside like the things believed; they began to exist entirely within the mind itself. Faith is not what is believed but that through which it is believed; the former is believed, the latter seen. Nevertheless, because it began to exist in a mind already existing before faith began in it, it seems an addition and will be counted among past things when sight replaces it and it ceases to exist. Its presence now, retained, seen, and loved, produces a different trinity from the one it will then produce through a trace of itself left in memory as it passes away, as we said earlier.

A question does arise, however, whether the virtues through which we live well in this mortality, since they too begin in a mind that was still a mind when previously existing without them, also cease to exist once they have brought us to eternal things. Some have thought they will cease, and in the case of three — prudence, courage, and self-control — this claim seems to have some substance; but justice is immortal and will then be perfected in us rather than cease to exist. Yet Cicero, the great master of eloquence, says of all four in his dialogue Hortensius: “If after departing this life we could live forever in the islands of the blessed, as the stories tell, what need would there be for eloquence without trials, or even for the virtues themselves? We would need no courage without facing toil or danger; no justice without anything belonging to someone else to covet; no self-control to govern desires that would not exist; and no prudence without a choice between good and evil. We would therefore be happy solely through understanding and knowing nature, through which alone the gods’ life is also praiseworthy. We can therefore understand that everything else belongs to necessity, but this alone to free choice.” This great orator, praising philosophy, recalling what he had learned from philosophers and explaining it clearly and pleasingly, declared all four virtues necessary only in this life, visibly full of troubles and errors; none would be necessary after departing this life if we could live where life is happy; good souls are happy solely through understanding and knowledge, that is, contemplating nature, within which nothing is better or more lovable than the nature that created and established all other natures. If being subject to this nature’s rule belongs to justice, justice is certainly immortal; it will not cease in that happiness, but will be as great and perfect as possible. Perhaps the other three virtues too — prudence without any risk of error, courage without the trouble of enduring evils, and self-control without resisting desires — will exist in that happiness: prudence would put no good before God or equal to Him; courage would cling to Him most firmly; and self-control would take pleasure in no harmful failing. But what justice now does in helping the miserable, prudence in guarding against traps, courage in enduring troubles, and self-control in restraining wrongful pleasures will not exist where there is no evil at all. These acts of virtue necessary for mortal life, like the faith toward which they should be directed, will therefore be counted among past things; retaining, seeing, and loving them as present now produces a different trinity from the one they will produce then, when we discover their past rather than present existence through traces left in memory as they pass away; then too there will be a trinity when this trace, whatever it may be, is retained in memory and truly recognized, with the will joining these two as a third.

In knowledge of all these temporal things we have mentioned, some knowable things precede knowledge of them by an interval of time, such as objects of sense already existing before being known, or everything learned through history; some, however, begin existing at the same time as knowledge of them — as when something visible that never existed before arises before our eyes: it certainly does not precede our knowledge; or if a sound occurs where someone is listening, the sound and its hearing certainly begin and end simultaneously. Nevertheless, whether preceding in time or beginning simultaneously, knowable things give birth to knowledge, rather than being born from knowledge. Once knowledge exists, whenever what we know and have stored in memory is revisited in recollection, who does not see that retaining it in memory precedes seeing it in recollection and joining the two through the will as a third? The mind, however, is different. The mind is not an addition to itself, as though its previously nonexistent self came from elsewhere to its already existing self, or as though, without coming from elsewhere, the previously nonexistent mind was born within that already existing mind, as previously nonexistent faith arises within an already existing mind. Nor, after knowing itself, does the mind recall itself as though established in its own memory without having been there before knowing itself; certainly, from the moment it began to exist, it has never ceased remembering, understanding, and loving itself, as we have shown. When it turns to itself in thought, a trinity therefore arises in which we can now recognize a word too; the word is formed from thought itself, with the will joining both. Here, then, we should recognize more clearly the image we seek.

Someone will object, The mind’s remembering itself, although it is always present to itself, is not memory; memory concerns past things rather than present things. Some writers, including Cicero, have divided prudence into three when discussing virtues — memory, understanding, and foresight: assigning memory to past things, understanding to present things, and foresight to future things; the last is certain only for those who know the future beforehand; people have no such gift unless it is given from above, as to the prophets. Thus the book of Wisdom says of humanity: “The thoughts of mortals are fearful, and our foresight uncertain.” But memory of past things and understanding of present things are certain: certain, I mean, concerning present nonphysical things; physical things are present to bodily eyes’ sight. Anyone denying memory of present things should consider the language used even in secular literature, where correctness of words received more care than truth of content. “Nor did Odysseus suffer such things, nor did the Ithacan forget himself in such great danger.” When Virgil said that Odysseus did not forget himself, what else did he mean except that he remembered himself? Since he was present to himself, he could not have remembered himself unless memory also concerned present things. Just as we call what enables past things to be recalled and remembered memory, so in something present, as the mind is to itself, we can reasonably call that memory which makes the mind present to itself, so that it can be understood through its own thought and both joined through self-love.

This trinity of the mind is God’s image, then, not because the mind remembers, understands, and loves itself, but because it can also remember, understand, and love its maker. By doing so it becomes wise itself. If it does not, it is foolish even when remembering, understanding, and loving itself. Let it therefore remember its God, in whose image it is made, and understand and love Him. More briefly, let it worship the uncreated God, by whom it was made with the capacity to receive and share in Him; this is why it is written, “Look, worshiping God is wisdom.” It will then be wise through sharing in that supreme Light rather than through its own light; where it lives eternally, it will reign in happiness. This is called human wisdom in such a way that it is also God’s. Only then is it true wisdom; if merely human, it is empty. Yet it is not God’s in the same way as the wisdom through which God is wise. He is not wise through sharing in Himself, as the mind is through sharing in God. God’s righteousness means both the righteousness through which He Himself is righteous and what He gives people when justifying the ungodly; praising this latter righteousness, the apostle says of some people that “ignorant of God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness;” so we can also say of some that, ignorant of God’s wisdom and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s wisdom. There is, then, an uncreated nature that made all other natures, great and small, undoubtedly surpassing those it made, and therefore also the nature we are discussing: the rational and intellectual nature, the human mind made in its maker’s image. That nature surpassing all the rest is God. Indeed, “He is not far from each of us,” as the apostle says, adding, “For in Him we live and move and exist.” If this concerned the body, it could even be understood of this physical world; bodily, we also live and move and exist in it. It must therefore be understood in a higher way, intelligible rather than visible, concerning the mind made in His image. What is not in Him, of whom Scripture divinely says, “For all things are from Him, through Him, and in Him”? If all things are in Him, where else can living things live or moving things move except in Him in whom they exist? Yet not everyone is with Him in the way expressed by the words addressed to Him, “I am always with You.” Nor is He with everyone in the way we mean when saying, May the Lord be with you. It is therefore humanity’s great misery to be apart from Him without whom it cannot exist. People certainly are not without Him in whom they exist; yet if they do not remember, understand, and love Him, they are not with Him. When someone forgets something completely, it is certainly impossible even to remind them of it.

Let us take an example from visible things. Someone you do not recognize tells you, You know me; and to remind you says where, when, and how you became acquainted; if you still do not recognize him after every reminder has been offered, you have forgotten so completely that all this knowledge has been erased from your mind; what remains is either to believe his statement that you once knew him; or not even that, if you consider the speaker untrustworthy. If you do remember him, you certainly return to your own memory and find what forgetfulness had not completely erased. Let us return to the point illustrated by this example from human interaction. Among other things, Psalm 9 says, “Let sinners be turned to hell, all the nations that forget God;” and Psalm 22 says, “All the ends of the earth will be reminded and turn to the Lord.” These nations had not forgotten God so completely that they could not remember Him when reminded; yet forgetting God, as though forgetting their own life, had turned them toward death, toward hell. When reminded, they turn to the Lord, as though coming alive again by remembering the life they had forgotten. We also read in Psalm 94, “Understand now, you senseless among the people; you fools, become wise at last. Will He who planted the ear not hear?” and so on. This was said to those who spoke emptily about God because they did not understand Him.

Divine Scripture contains still more testimony about love of God. In this love, the other two [namely, memory and understanding] are also implied, since no one loves what they do not remember or know absolutely nothing about. Hence that familiar and highest commandment, “Love the Lord your God.” The human mind is created so that it never ceases remembering, understanding, and loving itself. But since someone hating another seeks to harm that person, the human mind is also rightly said to hate itself when harming itself. It wants harm for itself unknowingly, because it does not consider what it wants harmful; yet wanting something harmful is still wanting harm for itself. This is why it is written, “Whoever loves unrighteousness hates his own soul.” Someone knowing how to love themselves therefore loves God; someone not loving God, even while loving themselves — something naturally implanted in them — is nevertheless fittingly said to hate themselves, since they do what harms them and attack themselves like their own enemy. It is certainly a horrifying error that although everyone wants to benefit themselves, many do only what harms them most. Describing a similar disease in animals unable to speak, the poet said, “May the gods grant better things to the faithful, and that error to enemies. With bare teeth they tore their own mangled limbs.” Since he was describing bodily disease, why call it an error, unless because nature disposes every animal to protect itself as much as possible, but this disease made them tear the very limbs they wanted kept safe? When the mind loves God and consequently, as we said, remembers and understands Him, it is rightly commanded to love its neighbor as itself; loving God means it now loves itself rightly rather than perversely. Through sharing in God, this image not only exists but is renewed from its old condition, restored from disfigurement, and made happy instead of unhappy. Although it loves itself so much that, given the choice, it would lose everything it loves less than itself rather than perish, it has abandoned Him who is above it, on whom alone it could depend to guard its strength and whom it could enjoy as its light, to whom the Psalm sings, “I will guard my strength by depending on You,” and again, “Come near Him and be enlightened.” Having abandoned Him, it has become so weak and dark that it has miserably fallen away even from itself toward things unlike itself and beneath itself, through loves it cannot conquer and errors from which it sees no way back. Now repentant through God’s mercy, it therefore cries in the Psalms, “My strength fails me; and the light of my eyes is no longer with me.” Yet amid these great evils of weakness and error, it could not lose its natural memory, understanding, and love of itself. We can therefore rightly say what I quoted earlier, “Although a person walks in an image, he troubles himself in vain: he stores up treasures without knowing for whom he will gather them.” Why does he store up treasures unless his strength has deserted him, through which he would possess God and lack nothing? Why does he not know for whom he will gather them unless his eyes’ light is no longer with him? He therefore does not see what Truth says, “Fool, this night they demand your soul from you. Whose will these things you prepared be?” Yet even such a person walks in an image, and the human mind has memory, understanding, and love of itself. Suppose it clearly understood that it could not have both, but could choose one while losing the other, either its accumulated treasures or its mind: who is so utterly mindless as to prefer treasures to the mind? Treasures can often overthrow the mind, but a mind not overthrown by treasures can live more easily and freely without any treasures. Who can possess any treasures except through the mind? An infant born however rich owns everything rightfully his, yet possesses nothing while his mind sleeps; how, then, can anyone possess anything after losing the mind entirely? Why say of treasures that, given the choice, anyone would rather lack them than the mind, when no one prefers or even compares them to the body’s lights, through which everyone possesses the sky itself, unlike gold possessed by only a few? Through bodily eyes everyone possesses whatever they enjoy seeing. Who, unable to keep both and forced to lose one, would not rather lose treasures than eyes? Yet if someone were asked on the same terms whether they would rather lose their eyes or mind, who could fail to see with their mind that they would prefer losing their eyes? A mind without bodily eyes is still human; bodily eyes without a mind belong to beasts. Who would not rather be human, even physically blind, than a beast able to see? I have said this to remind even slower readers or listeners, however briefly, how greatly the mind loves itself even when weak and erring in wrongly loving and pursuing things beneath it. It could not love itself if completely ignorant of itself, if it neither remembered nor understood itself; through this image of God within it, it has the power to cling to Him whose image it is. Its position in the order of natures, rather than places, has Him alone above it. When it clings to Him completely, it will be one spirit, as the apostle testifies, “Whoever clings to the Lord is one spirit.” This happens as the mind draws near to share in His nature, truth, and happiness, without His nature, truth, or happiness increasing. When it happily clings to that nature, everything it sees will be unchangeable. Then, as divine Scripture promises it, “Its desire will be satisfied with good things,” unchangeable goods — the Trinity itself, its own God, whose image it is. So that it will never again be harmed, it will be hidden in His presence, so abundantly filled with Him that sin will never delight it. But now, when it sees itself, it does not see something unchangeable.

It certainly does not doubt this, because it is miserable and longs to be happy, and can hope for this only because it is changeable; if unchangeable, it could no more become happy after being miserable than miserable after being happy. What could have made it miserable under an almighty, good Lord except its own sin and its Lord’s righteousness? What will make it happy except its own merit and its Lord’s reward? But its merit too is the grace of Him whose reward will be its happiness; it cannot give itself the righteousness it lacks because it lost it. It received this righteousness when humanity was created, and certainly lost it through sinning. It therefore receives righteousness through which to deserve happiness; the apostle therefore truthfully says to it when it begins taking pride in good as though its own, “What do you have that you did not receive? If you received it, why boast as though you had not?” When it rightly remembers its Lord after receiving His Spirit, it fully recognizes, taught by its inward teacher, that it can rise only through His freely given action, and could fall only through its own voluntary failure. It certainly does not remember its own happiness; that existed but no longer exists, and it has forgotten it completely, so it cannot even be reminded of it. But concerning that happiness, it believes its God’s trustworthy Scriptures, written through His prophets, telling of paradise’s happiness and handing down a historical account of humanity’s first good and evil. It remembers the Lord its God, for He always exists; He neither existed and ceased to exist, nor exists without having existed; just as He will never cease to exist, He has always existed. He is wholly present everywhere. The mind therefore lives, moves, and exists in Him, and so can remember Him. This is not because it remembers knowing Him in Adam, or anywhere else before this body’s life, or when first created to be implanted in this body; it remembers none of this. Whatever the case may be, forgetfulness has erased it. But it is reminded to turn to God, as to the light that somehow touched it even when turned away from Him. This is why even the ungodly think about eternity and rightly blame and praise many things in human conduct. By what rules do they judge except those in which they see how people should live, even if they themselves do not live that way? Where do they see these rules? Not in their own [moral] nature; these things are certainly seen by the mind, and their minds are admittedly changeable, but anyone able to see this in these rules sees them as unchangeable; nor in their mind’s condition, since these are rules of righteousness and their minds are admittedly unrighteous. Where are these rules written, through which even an unrighteous person recognizes what is righteous, seeing that he should have what he himself lacks? Where are they written except in the book of that Light called Truth? From there every righteous law is copied and transferred (by being impressed, so to speak, rather than migrating) to the heart of someone doing righteousness, as a ring’s image passes into wax without leaving the ring. Someone who does not act but sees how to act is turned away from this light, yet still touched by it. Someone unable even to see how to live sins more excusably, because he is not a transgressor of an unknown law; yet even this person is sometimes touched by the brilliance of truth present everywhere, when, on being reminded, he acknowledges it.

Those reminded to turn to the Lord from the disfigurement through which worldly desires conformed them to this world are reshaped by Him, when they hear the apostle say, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be reshaped in the renewal of your mind;” so that this image may begin to be reshaped by Him who first shaped it. This image cannot reshape itself, although it could disfigure itself. He says elsewhere: “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and put on the new person, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth.” What “created according to God” means is expressed elsewhere as “according to God’s image.” Through sinning it lost righteousness and holiness of truth, making this image disfigured and discolored; it recovers this when reshaped and renewed. When saying “In the spirit of your mind,” he does not mean two things, as though mind were one thing and the mind’s spirit another; he says this because every mind is spirit, but not every spirit is mind. God too is Spirit, unable to be renewed because unable to grow old. We also speak of a human spirit distinct from mind, to which images resembling bodies belong; the apostle speaks of this to the Corinthians, saying, “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.” He says this when what is spoken is not understood; it cannot even be spoken unless images of physical sounds precede the mouth’s sound in the spirit’s thought. The human soul is also called spirit, as in the Gospel’s words, “He bowed His head and gave up His spirit;” meaning bodily death through the soul’s departure. An animal’s spirit is also spoken of, as expressly written in Solomon’s book Ecclesiastes: “Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward, and whether the animal’s spirit goes downward into the earth?” Genesis also says that the flood killed all flesh that “had in it the spirit of life.” Spirit can also mean wind, something clearly physical; as in the Psalms, “Fire and hail, snow and ice, the spirit of the storm.” Since spirit has so many meanings, the apostle used “the spirit of the mind” to mean the spirit called mind. Likewise when this apostle says, “In stripping off the body of flesh,” he certainly does not mean two things, as though flesh were one thing and the body of flesh another; body names many things without flesh (besides flesh there are many heavenly and earthly bodies), so he uses body of flesh to mean the body that is flesh. Likewise, spirit of the mind means the spirit that is mind. Elsewhere he calls it an image still more clearly, commanding the same thing in different words. “Strip off the old person with its deeds,” he says, “and put on the new person, renewed in knowledge of God according to its Creator’s image.” Where one passage reads, “Put on the new person, created according to God,” the other says, “Put on the new person, renewed according to its Creator’s image.” In one place he says “According to God,” in the other “According to its Creator’s image.” Instead of the former passage’s “In righteousness and holiness of truth,” the latter says “In knowledge of God.” This renewal and reshaping of the mind therefore happens according to God, or according to God’s image. According to God means that we should not suppose it happens according to another creature; according to God’s image means this renewal happens where God’s image is, in the mind. Similarly, we say that someone leaving the body faithful and righteous is dead according to the body rather than the spirit. What does dead according to the body mean except dead bodily or in the body, rather than in the soul? If we say someone is beautiful according to the body, or strong according to the body rather than the mind, what else does this mean except beautiful or strong bodily rather than mentally? We speak this way in countless instances. We should therefore not understand “According to its Creator’s image” as a different image according to which the person is renewed, rather than the very image itself being renewed.

This renewal certainly does not happen in the single moment of conversion, as renewal in baptism happens in a single moment through forgiveness of all sins; not one sin, however small, remains unforgiven. Being free of fever differs from recovering strength after the weakness it caused; removing a weapon lodged in the body is one thing, healing its wound through successful treatment another; so the first treatment removes weakness’s cause through forgiveness of all sins; the second heals the weakness itself, gradually, through progress in renewing this image. The Psalm shows both when we read, “Who forgives all your sins,” which takes place in baptism. Then comes, “Who heals all your weaknesses;” this happens through daily advances as this image is renewed. The apostle speaks of this clearly: “Although our outer person is decaying, our inner person is renewed day by day.” And “it is renewed in knowledge of God, that is, in righteousness and holiness of truth,” according to the apostle’s testimony quoted shortly before. Someone renewed day by day through progress in knowledge of God, righteousness, and holiness of truth transfers love from temporal to eternal things, visible to intelligible things, bodily to spiritual things, persistently restraining and reducing desire for the former, and binding themselves to the latter through love. They do this as far as God helps them. God Himself declares, “Without me you can do nothing.” When life’s last day finds someone holding to faith in the Mediator amid this progress and growth, holy angels will receive them to lead them to the God they worshiped, to be perfected by Him; at the world’s end they will receive an incorruptible body for glory rather than punishment. God’s likeness will be perfected in this image when the vision of God is perfected. The Apostle Paul says of this: “Now we see through a mirror, in a riddle, but then face to face.” And again: “With unveiled face, beholding the Lord’s glory as in a mirror, we are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as through the Lord’s Spirit.” This happens day by day in those making good progress.

The Apostle John says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet appeared: we know that when He appears we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is.” This shows that God’s full likeness comes about in this image when it receives the full vision of God. Yet the Apostle John may also seem to be speaking about bodily immortality. In this too we will be like God, but only the Son, since He alone in the Trinity took a body, died and rose in it, and carried it to heaven. This too is called the Son of God’s image, in which we will have an immortal body like His, conformed in this respect only to the Son’s image, rather than the Father’s or Holy Spirit’s, because only of Him do we read and accept with entirely sound faith that “the Word became flesh.” The apostle therefore says, “Those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to His Son’s image, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.” “The firstborn” certainly “from the dead,” according to this same apostle; through this death His flesh was sown in dishonor and rose in glory. According to this image of the Son, to which immortality conforms us bodily, we also do what this same apostle says: “As we have borne the earthly one’s image, let us also bear the image of the one from heaven;” we who were mortal according to Adam should hold with true faith and certain, firm hope that according to Christ we will be immortal. We can now bear this image through faith rather than sight, through hope rather than actual possession. When saying this, the apostle was speaking of bodily resurrection.

As for the image spoken of in the words, “Let us make humanity in our image and likeness,” we believe, and understand as far as our investigation could reach, that humanity was made in the Trinity’s image, since it does not say, In my image, or In your image. The Apostle John’s passage should therefore be understood primarily according to this image, when he says, “We will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is;” for he spoke of the one of whom he had said, “We are God’s children.” Bodily immortality will be perfected in the moment of resurrection of which the Apostle Paul says, “In the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet; the dead will rise incorruptible, and we will be changed.” In that very blink of an eye, before judgment, the spiritual body will rise in power, incorruption, and glory, now sown as a natural body in weakness, corruption, and dishonor. But the image renewed in the mind’s spirit through knowledge of God, inwardly rather than outwardly, day by day, will be perfected through the vision itself; after judgment this vision will be face to face, but now it progresses through a mirror, in a riddle. We must understand this perfection as the reason for the words, “we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is.” We will receive this gift when it has been said, “Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you.” Then the ungodly will be taken away without seeing the Lord’s glory, when those on the left go to eternal punishment and those on the right to eternal life. “This is eternal life,” Truth says, “that they may know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You sent.” This contemplative wisdom, which I believe Scripture properly calls wisdom as distinct from knowledge, is only human wisdom, yet people have it only from Him through sharing in whom the rational and intellectual mind can become truly wise — this is the contemplative wisdom Cicero praises at the end of his dialogue Hortensius: “As we consider these things night and day and sharpen understanding, the mind’s eye, taking care never to let it grow dull, that is, living in philosophy; we have great hope that, if our perception and understanding are mortal and perishable, after fulfilling our human duties we will have a pleasant sunset, a painless extinction, and something like rest from life; or if, as ancient philosophers thought — the greatest and by far the most celebrated — we have eternal, divine souls, then we must think that the more these have always kept to their own course, reason and the desire to investigate, and the less they have mingled and entangled themselves in human vices and errors, the easier their ascent and return to heaven will be.” He then adds this conclusion, finishing his discussion by repeating it: “Therefore, to end this discussion at last, if we want either to be extinguished peacefully after living in these pursuits, or to move without delay from this home to another far better one, we must devote all our effort and care to these studies.” Here I am amazed that someone so gifted promises people living in philosophy, which makes people happy through contemplating truth, “a pleasant sunset after fulfilling human duties, if our perception and understanding are mortal and perishable;” as though something we did not love, or rather fiercely hated, would die and perish, making its sunset pleasant to us! He certainly did not learn this from the philosophers he praises so highly; this view reflects the New Academy, where he chose to doubt even the clearest things. From the greatest and by far most celebrated philosophers, as he himself admits, he learned that souls are eternal. Eternal souls are appropriately encouraged to be found in “their own course,” when this life ends, that is, “in reason and the desire to investigate,” and to mingle and entangle themselves less in human vices and errors, to make their return to God easier. But this course of loving and investigating truth is insufficient for the miserable, all mortals relying on this reasoning alone without faith in the Mediator; as I tried to demonstrate as fully as possible in earlier books of this work, especially Books 4 and 13.