ABSTRACT
In much modern appropriation, Augustine is often treated as the source and exemplar of a distinctively western style of trinitarian theology.1 This division of trinitarian theologies into ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ began, in its modern scholarly form, as a way of indicating the superiority of the ‘western’ and primarily medieval variety.2 Ironically, in recent writing, the same division has been used in order to highlight the supposed deficiencies of the West. However, this irony aside, one unfortunate consequence of making Augustine so central to this grand historical narrative of trinitarian theology has been that the unsympathetic reading of his thought commonly found among modern theologians tends to foist onto him all the evils that are supposedly characteristic of later western tradition. Because the overall narrative is accepted as a scholarly given, Augustine is ‘read’ to fit the place the narrative accords him.
