An Augustinian Parody

“[W]here or how shall the Trinity manifest itself?” ¹ In Chapter 2 I contended that this question animated the speculations of the De Trinitate and provided the conceptual center of Augustine’s thought. The answer to this question was distributed throughout the created order (and indeed only through it) in a series of microcosms which manifest the Father’s love for and delight in the beauty of the Son. ² High among these, of course, was the triad of memory, intellect and will in the human soul, and yet even these did not suffice as an image of that beauty apart from the worship of it. This worship required, in turn, a proper orientation toward other constituents of that order, an orientation, namely, of charity, and, when regarded from its point of view, “every creature and every kind of movement that can be considered by the human mind speaks to us for our instruction.” ³ Yet the priority of worship indicates that the beauty of these creatures, and of the soul itself, are both penultimate in relation to the full beauty of the created order and somehow a microcosm of that beauty in its fruition. That beauty was the one Christ, Head and Body, in whose unity and sacrifice the love, gift, and delight of the Father are manifest. Creation is finally realized as it manifests this generosity, which is to say that, for Augustine, creation is finally realized in and as Christ. Consequently, any account of an Augustinian “flight from the world” that neglects this integral role of created beauty in eliciting desire for the Father and manifesting his joy fails to ascend to the Augustinianism of Augustine. ⁴