THE TRINITARIAN ANALOGIES OF LOVE IN AUGUSTINE AND RICHARD OF ST.

VICTOR

A Research Paper Submitted to

Dr. Rex Butler and Dr. Rhyne Putman
of the
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the M.Div. Course
Ancient and Medieval Theology THEO5310RB-RP
in the Divisions of Theological and Historical Studies

Roy Israel Alva Navarro

B.A., National University of San Marcos. Lima-Peru. 2012

The Trinitarian Analogies of Love in Augustine and Richard of St. Victor.

it is necessary, therefore, to purge our minds, in order
to be able to see ineffably that which is ineffable
Augustine, On the Trinity, Book I.3
Introduction
The trinity is a doctrine that is not found explicitly in Scripture, therefore its appearance and
validity is some questionable. This problem produce many repercussions in the understanding of
this doctrine and it is because of this lack of explicitness regarding the doctrine of the trinity that
will arise various heresies from very early times in the history of Christianity, among the most
representative modalism, Subordinationism, and Polytheism.
Modalism is the view that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are merely different aspects or
manifestations of Goddifferent modes of appearance by which God makes himself known. A
great analogy for a modalism perspective of the trinity is given by Michael Rea:
If modalism were true, then the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would be
analogous to terms like Superman and Clark Kent. The substance called Superman is
strictly identical to the substance called Clark Kent. But there is, nevertheless, a
distinction to be drawn. The Superman-disguise is different from the Clark-Kent-disguise;
and so it makes perfect sense to say that Superman and Clark Kent are different

manifestations of Kal El (the Kryptonian who is both Superman and Clark Kent), or
different modes in which Kal El appears.1
Subordinationism is the view that neither the Son nor the Spirit is truly and fully divine. Either
they are not divine at all, or their divinity is somehow subordinate to that of the Father. They are
gods of sort, but lesser gods. Subordinationism is ruled out by language like true God from true
God or, more explicitly, the father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.2
This heresies will be the most problematic and influential for a long time, and even Augustin will
be accuse of modalism in some of his analogy that we will discuss later.
However, we can analyze the doctrine from two different ways of approaching the study. The first,
which has been called "economic Trinity" that arises from the first century and aims to understand
the activity of God in the world, that is, the different roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the
process of creating and salvation (trinity revealed in the acts of God). The second is the "immanent
Trinity" which focus in the ontological study of God and its inner relationship.3 This approach
tends to be more philosophical and emerges clearly in the fourth century and will be clearly
reflected in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan council (325-381).

Thomas P. Flint & Michael Rea, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, Oxford

University Press, 2009, pages 695-696.

2

Ibid, page 694.

Michael Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples, Zondervan, 2013,

p. 84.

Thereafter the Judeo-Christian God is no longer just a theoretical concept or an axiom but is the
triune God whose living communion of three persons or hypostases are joined together in a union
of mutual love. As Gregory of Nazianzus would say "when I say God, I think of Father, Son and
Holy Spirit."4 The same can be said about the Nicene-Constantinopolitan council Creed that
begins, "We believe in one God" and then continue not inclined to an abstract conception of an
intrapersonal god but personalize this God saying "we believe in one God, the Father ... and in one
Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,... and in the Holy Spirit..."5
In this picture we can observe the emergence of the concept of God based on the idea of
relationship. The Christian God is not only a unity but also a union, and is not only individual but
also interpersonal. The theological tradition especially since Augustine always realized the
importance of analogical concepts of the Trinity in the search for a better understanding of the
triune God, then we will observe some of them.
Agustin of Hippo and the Psychological Analogies
The Bishop of Hippo devoted much of his years in a work whose importance has not been steadily
losing its value through the centuries. The doctrine of the trinity is a quest to obtain a better
understanding of the triune God of the Christianity and fight certain heresies. Augustine start from
the Trinitarian dogma as a matter of faith. For there is no doubt about the triune nature of God,

Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 45, 4.

Quoted in Kelly J. N. D., Early Christian Creeds, 3rd edition. New York: Longman, 1972,

pages 297-298.

therefore his work De Trinitate not engaged, as most of the works on this subject, to provide proof
of the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, nor to prove their unity of essence:
that the Trinity is the one and only and true God, and also how the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit are rightly said, believed, understood, to be of one and the same substance
or essence (Augustine, on the Trinity, Book I, chapter 1, 4).
But Augustine is first of all conscious of the distance between him and his subject matter, before
whom no language suffices as he said the eye of the human mind, being weak, is dazzled in that
so transcendent light6 Though he calls God a substance, he considers essentia a preferable term
equivalent to the Greek ousia.7 From initially able only to conceive being as material, he gradually
discovered the possibility of a more spiritual, immaterial understanding. Augustine also followed
the Greek approach in basing the diversity of Persons on relations. There are no accidents in God
for there is nothing changeable in Him, nor does everything that is said of Him refer to His
substance.8
Here Augustine introduced a middle way, the category of relation or reference:
Because the Father is only called the Father because He has a Son, the Son must, therefore,
be only called the Son because He has a Father, and so these terms are not said according
to the substance. For each of them is not so called in relation to Himself, but the terms are

Augustine, On the Trinity. Book I. chapter 2, 4.

John Polkinghorne, The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and

Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010, page 153.

8

Augustine, On the Trinity. Book V. chapter 5, 6.

used mutually and in relation of one to the other; nor do they refer to anything accidental,
because that which is called the Father and that which is called the Son is eternal and
unchangeable in them. (Augustine, on the Trinity, Book V. chapter 5, 6)
Then, we can say that the divine names signify relationships, and it is just because as a terms of
mutual references or relationships that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are actually different from one
another. Here we can see that Augustine starts with the idea that persons of the Trinity must be
understood as "subsistent relations," idea which will be key throughout the rest of his book.9 It is
based on the relational character of God's being that Augustin developed two different types of
analogy for its understanding.
One of the categories of Augustins analogies is of unipersonal type and is called the psychological
analogy or the trinity of the mind, and this is the analogy in which he dedicated more time. We are
not going to develop in detail this analogy in this paper because of the space. However, we will
mention that in this analogy Augustin compares the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with the mind,
knowledge and love within the psyche of the human and then use the memory, understanding and
will with the object to reflect on the unity of the three whenever we reflect on one of the divine
three as individual:
We should conceive these three (memory, understanding, will) as some one thing which
all have, as in the case of wisdom itself, and which is so retained in the nature of each one,
as that he who has it, is that which he has in that simple and highest nature, substance is
not one thing, and love another, but that substance itself is love, and that love itself is

John Polkinghorne, The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and

Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010, page 155.

substance, whether in the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit, and yet the Holy Spirit is
properly called love. (Augustine, on the Trinity, Book XV. chapter 17, 29)
At the same time we must to be careful not to speak only of each of the divine three as fullness,
without also noting that the fullness that they possess in such a way that they are identical with it
is one fullness that is God. However with respect to this psychological analogies Michael rea says:
The usual objection to the view of Augustine is that his analogies slip into modalism.
Granted, Augustine succeed in drawing distinctions among the persons of the trinity. But
in doing so, they seem to locate the persons in the wrong category. On some interpretations,
the Augustinian view suggests that the persons are to be identified with cognitive faculties,
or mental models of operation, both of which are clearly mere aspects of a mind. 10
Although most scholars focus in this analogy and consider it as the most important and tend to
believe that what most interested to Augustine were the unipersonal analogies based on the human
faculties, but actually at the end of his work Augustine returns to the paradigm that he presented
first , which is the one that he does not devote much space, the interpersonal paradigm of mutual
love between the persons of the Trinity and at the end of his book he suggested that between the
different types of analogies this is perhaps the least unsuitable.11 And thus give great value to the
"trinity of love," hence the Augustinian interpretation of a relational God becomes less
"essentialist" and more "personalist."

10

Thomas P. Flint & Michael Rea, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, Oxford

University Press, 2009, pages 703.

11

Augustine, On the Trinity, Book XV, chapter 10

Augustin of Hippo and the Interpersonal Trinity of Love

Working with 1 John 4:8, 4:16, "God is love," Augustine argues that what the three persons of the
trinity hold in common because of their one substance, which the Son and Holy Spirit have from
the Father, is in fact love.
Augustine asked what it meant to say God is love. Augustine understands that love is not love
unless you love something. Love has an object. I love ____. Subject and object. Someone loves
someone else. Not only that, but in love we have the lover, what is being loved, and love. The
lover loves the beloved. Love is reciprocated. That mutual loving is a kind of coupling together.
Lover and Beloved are connected through love itself.
So this unipersonal model of a trinity of love involves three elements: the lover (amans), the
beloved (quod amatur) and the love (el amor) which reciprocally occurs between the lover and the
beloved. Applying this to the trinity, the Father can be seen as a lover, the Son as the beloved and
the Holy Spirit as the "bond of love" (vinculum amoris), uniting father and son, which is the
"communion" that subsists between them.12
But what is love or charity, which divine Scripture so greatly praises and proclaims,
except the love of good? But love is of some one that loves, and with love something is
loved. Behold, then, there are three things: he that loves, and that which is loved, and love.
The trinity, book VIII, chapter 10, 14

12

Ayres, Lewis. Augustine and the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Pages 284-285.

There is not one who loves more than another, nor do any of the three persons offer to another love
that is not reciprocated. The love they have is the love that each is in his very being, and which
they mutually share with one another. Or as Scott Dunham says:
The love of each for the others -what Ayres called their "self-giving reciprocal
communion"- is alluded to in Augustine's use of the word "cleaving" in The Trinity 6.9.
This may also be translated as "union," in the sense of a husband and wife who are joined
in marriage. That the Son and Father cleave to each other in "absolutely inseparable and
eternal mutuality,"" and that they do so in the Holy Spirit who is their common charity,"
describes how the three are related in their substance.13
Every one (Father, Son, Spirit) is turned toward the others. Mutuality refers to a union of
interdependence, not only as a description of their eternal being, but also as a moral example for
the believer, to be imitated, since human relationships (and the human-divine relationship) are to
be founded in the unity of love. In lewis ayres words:
This is an analogy of sorts: the act of love in which the lovers love attempts to bring lover
together with beloved mirrors the Trinitarian life.
But the Trinity of love of Augustine seems to suffer of two problems. First, make of the spirit the
mutual love that exists between the Father and the Son, looks directly lead to the position of the
filioque, in other words, the doctrine of the double procession, according to which the Holy Spirit
proceeds from both the Father and the Son. But Augustine was never was a supporter of the

13

Scott A. Dunham, The Trinity and Creation in Augustine: an ecological analysis. Albany:

State University of New York Press, 2008. Page 51.

filioque.14 He was rather very carefully to insist that the spirit proceeds from the Father
principaliter, "primarily" or "principially" and of the Son only in a secondary sense and derivative
as gift of the father. In other words, everything the Son has receives from the Father, so also is of
the Father from whom receives the power to make proceed the Spirit. This means that along with
the Cappadocian fathers, Augustin saw the Father within the divinity as the principium as the
ultimate source and the only origin of the hypostatic being within Trinity.
A second and more serious difficulty in the Trinity of love of Augustine is that this analogy
resembles God as two people, not three. Indeed, while the lover and the beloved are two different
people, the "mutual love" that exists between them is not a third person in addition to the other
two. Thus the interpersonal model of Augustine is in danger of depersonalize the Holy Spirit, but
this was surely not his intention.15

14

For a better understanding of the doctrine of filioque in Augustine see Lewis Ayres, Augustine

on the Trinity, in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Page 130.
15

John Polkinghorne, The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science

and Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010, page 158.

Richard of St. Victor and the Social Model of the Trinity

It has been much debate about the origin of this Trinitarian perspective of Richard, focused on the
experience of the interpersonal love (or community). Some have highlighted the influence of the
Greek Fathers. Others, however, without denying the Greek source, accentuate the Augustinian
influence in Ricardo's speech, from which arises precisely the same paradox of love (intrapersonal
and interpersonal) that Augustine had studied. Without going into genetic arguments, we present
the key elements of his Trinitarian vision, conceived as an ontology of communion of love.
Richard conceived God as mystery of communion where people come from each other and all
share the same essence in the meeting. Speaking in a general way one could say that Richard has
linked two primary models of experience: genetic metaphysics of the Neoplatonism that conceive
the being as an originating process and the relational view of the old Greek Fathers who interpret
the Trinitarian persons as internal moments of divine dialogue. Thus has joined genesis and
communion: love as a process of being (generation) carrying from the Father to the Son in the
Spirit; and love as relational unity, communion of Trinitarian persons who are together and rejoice
in being mutually involved in the very essence of the divine. By proposing in this way the mystery
of God, Richard of St. Victor wants to follow the tradition of the great theologians of the Church
(especially Augustine) who had already linked the biblical revelation (vision of God as love) and
rational thinking. Thus, ontology (philosophical understanding of reality) becomes part of the
theology (Christian interpretation of God).
The novelty of Richard is in the way of understanding the reality of the man that he sees as the
"image of God". In his view, the real man (which is a reflection of God on earth) is not the
individual who seeks himself (who knows and loves himself) in an introspective process, as was
stated in the most common line of the Augustinian tradition. Only in the inter-human encounter,

in the act of mutual love which ties the friends, men come to be understood as a sign of God on
earth. This is how Richard of St. Victor interprets Jesus and the experience of the Church. 16
Therefore, one cannot speak of the Trinity from a perspective of an individual process of a soul
that knows and loves itself: This process, although it would be very well done, it would still prepersonal, this is, pre-Trinitarian. The real human being, as a sign of Trinidad and as a genuine
ontology, emerges where man is conceived as a process of shared life, in other words, as
communitarian junction: the person expresses and realizes itself (as an individual) insofar it does
it from and through others (community).
This change of perspective defined the Trinitarian vision of Richard of St. Victor, foundational
ontology of communal love. Three are, in his view, the primary forms of love; three moments of
its divine realization:
a) Father. The transcendent Being, God is Lord of himself, in original perfection: He does
not need of the creation to be God. However, being love, God gives himself without
ceasing: free delivery of all he has. Thus 'exists' as Father, fount of love that comes from
himself and gives (by grace) to his whole nature.
b) Son. As a Father, God gives his own being in the gesture of generation, making arise a
different person whom receives his own self and share it as a gesture of grateful: the
Son.

16

Declan Marmion and R. van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to the Trinity, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 2010. Page 98.

Only is an infinite love where are endless the act of giving and receiving, the joy of the
communion. So the Father give himself fully, unlimited, and eternally. Equally limitless
and eternal is the host of the Son whom receives his being and replies to him. Both of
them exist only in the communion, as a subjects of a relation of love.
c) Holy Spirit. But the love of two cannot withdraw into themselves; their relationship is
perfect only where facing each other, the two come together and look at the time to a
third, making well arise the common Spirit which is the fruit of the love for each other.
So, along with the fount of love that is the Father is the fount of shared love, forming
Son and Father, loving themselves in fellowship, and producing as a consequence the
divine Spirit as completed love.17
In this perspective, the Holy Spirit is not only the common love, a bond that unites the
Father with the Son in a personalized dual unity. Using an extremely significant terminology,
Richard called him the Co-beloved (Condilectus) so that the Third person comes from the
union of the background (Father and Son). The common love, space and strength of duality,
is ratified and complete where the lovers, joining in the deepest bond of love, make arise
the new person of the Spirit, which is the Condilectus:
Condilectio, thus, is not simply a reciprocal caritas; rather it is caritas in harmony and
communitarian spirit between at least three persons, who are united by the same circle
of love. Triniatrian condilectio is the basis of divine relationality; it shows how the Trinity
subsists because a communal love makes plurality-in-substantial-unity possible. As

17

Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity. Book III, 2- 4

Richard writes, We rightly speak of co-love when a third [person] is loved by the two, in
harmony and with a communitarian spirit . . . when the two [persons] affects are fused
so to become only one, because of the third flame of love. From this, it is clear that not
even divinity would have co-love if . . . a third [person] . . . was missing.
And Richard of St. victor says:
We can clearly deduce that the highest degree of charity-love andtogether with this
the fullness of goodness cannot be present if a lack of will or power prevents someone
[else] from being associated with this love and [prevents] communication of the greatest
joy. Thus, it is necessary that those who areand are worthy to besupremely loved
seek with the same desire someone else to be included in their love and [seek] to possess
[him] in absolute concord, according to [that very] desire [of theirs].18
Thus we can talk of degrees of love. Love means giving, generosity in engendering (Father). It also
involves communion: Father Son are together and dialogue in a direct communication, in full
transparency. But common love is perfect only when both raise a third one or Condilectio (Holy
Spirit) to whom offer what they share, being different from one another.
This means that the Holy Spirit cannot be conceived as the inner love of the divine nature that
develops his process, knowing himself, and affirms his own being in a gesture of pure
introspection. Nor is the love of two (son and father) that lock themselves in a kind of selfsufficient dual-personality; in that case there would exist a dialogical encounter, but it would be

18

Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity. Book III, 11

closed communion that seeks only in himself. Well, surpassing that level of love of two to
themselves (in closed communion), the Spirit is love of both to a third party which arises as
fullness of the divine; the Spirit is, at once, the Third, and the Condilectus that sprouting of the
Father and the Son binds them in a freely and complete communion.19
That means it must overcome the individual selfishness that would exist where a being shuts
itself, without offering his own being (as childless father, who would cease to be a parent). Must
also overcome selfishness of two beings that would exist where the lover and beloved (Father
and Son) would come to shut themselves, closing his own fulfillment for themselves. true love
comes only where have overcome all selfishness, so that the two lovers (Father and Son) are
open to share with a third one, who reveals himself as a result and reality of a common love. And
completes the original and eternal love (divine immanence), so that it can spill to the exterior
(salvation economy).20
The Trinity of eternal love is formed thus by two lovers (diligentes) and a co-loved (condilectus)
who come from both that ratify and complete their communion
if the two [persons] who love each other are so generous to be willing to communicate
every perfection of theirs, it is necessary that both of them require with equal desire and
for the same reason a third [person] to be loved in the same fashion. [It is also necessary

19

Michael Horton. The Christian Faith, Zondervan, 2011, p. 284.

20

Dominique Poirel, Scholastic reasons, monastic meditations and victorine conciliations, in The

Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Page 178.

that they] possess him, according to their desire, in the fullness of their power. (Richard
of St. Victor, On the Trinity. Book III, 15).
This perspective overcome a closed symmetrical dualism; the mystery of God is revealed as dual
union, open to the other, that is, the fruit and guarantee of the mutual love, which is the Third
one (the Holy Spirit).

However, there seems to be a problem in the construction of this theory as Nieuwenhove says
There is, however, a certain ambiguity in relation to the Person of the Holy Spirit. In some places
Richard seems to suggest that the Holy Spirit merely receives love and does not actively love
another (divine) Person: the property of the Holy Spirit is to possess love without giving it to
another Person.21 This seems to lead to a somewhat passive pneumatology: the Holy Spirit is
merely given but does not love us actively, reflecting his passive or receptive status within the
immanent Trinity. And in other places Richard does seem to suggest that the Spirit loves
(rependit) the other Persons, albeit with a love that is utterly received. This, however, raises the

21

Declan Marmion and R. van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to the Trinity, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 2010. Page 103.

question whether he can still maintain the personal distinction between Son and Spirit within the
Trinity.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity.
St. Victor, Richard of. On the Trinity.
Nazianzus, Gregory of. Orations.

Secondary sources
Ayres, Lewis. Augustine and the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Dunham, Scott A. The Trinity and Creation in Augustine: an ecological analysis. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2008.
Flint, Thomas P. and Rea, Michael. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, Oxford
University Press, 2009.
Gilles Emery, O. P. and Levering, Matthew. The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011.
Horton, Michael. Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples, Zondervan, 2013.
Kelly J. N. D., Early Christian Creeds, 3rd edition. New York: Longman, 1972.
Marmion, Declan and Nieuwenhove, R. Van. An Introduction to the Trinity, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Polkinghorne, John. The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and
Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010.