Mo' Dernity, Mo' Problems

Continued Commentary on Saint Augustine's Trinity (Translated by Edmund Hill)

Filioque Correction
I missed something on the filioque post. As it turns out, Augustine says that while the Son is born of the father, the Holy Spirit comes forth "not as being born but as being given" (29 V), and the Church teaches that the Holy Spirit "proceeds, not by way of generation, but by way of spiration, from the Father and the Son together, as from a single principle." So the Son and Holy Spirit can be distinguished by the way in which they originate from the Father.

Unfortunately, at present I'm unable to comment further, as someone sent me a link to Vladimir Lossky's "The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine", and it's going to take me a while to process it.

Commentary on Saint Augustine's Trinity (Translated by Edmund Hill)

I'm not going to comment on Augustine's arguments against earlier Trinitarian Catholic theologians (who did odd things like speaking of the Son as the inherintly visible part of the Trinity) and the Arians, since those beliefs have basically died out.

Three Persons, One Being
Christians believe that God is three persons in one being. But how are the persons to be distinguished in a way that will permit us to see them as one in being? We can't say that the Son differs from the Father in terms of some attribute (for example, the Son is the Father's power), because God is perfectly simple and has no attributes. And we can't say that the Son is different in substance, because then we'd have two gods rather than one. Augustine has a super-cool explanation. The Son does not differ from the Father attribute-wise or substance-wise, but rather relationship-wise. He is different from the father only because he proceeds from the Father, while the Father proceeds from niether the Son nor the Holy Spirit. Similarly, the Holy Spirit differs from the Father and the Son because he proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Now, you might say that Augustine is making up a bogus distinction between relationships and attributes or substances. But I think the distinction turns out to be valid. You can see this, as Augustine points out, by noticing that before God created angels, he was not yet Lord (a Lord requires a servant). Yet he did not change in substance by becoming Lord.

Filioque
Now, a question for all my Greek Orthodox readers out there. What is the difference between the Son and the Holy Spirit? Both the Son and Holy Spirit proceed from the Father (in Greek Orthodox theology). So there is no difference relationship-wise between the Son and the Holy Spirit. And surely, there is no difference substance-wise, since that would mess up divine unity, and there is no difference attribute-wise, since that would mess up divince simplicity. So all 'ya all need to convert.

The Father is Greater than I
Augustine also showed me something that can cause confusion in reading the New Testament. In the Scriptures, we find Christ spoken about as either God or Man. For example, "In the beginning, there was the Word" and "My Lord and My God" and "The Son of God" refer to Christ's divine nature, while "The Son of Man" and "The Father is Greater than I" refer to Christ's human nature.

Man is the Image of God
If Man is made in God's image, does man's being in some way contain an image of the Trinity? Augustine thinks so, and he searches for this image and attempts to explain how it is distorted by the Fall.
Something obvious which I hadn't thought of - if man is made in the image of the God, then there is a connection between knowing one's self and knowing God.

Aristotle
According to the translator's notes, Augustine disliked Aristotle because he wrongly believed Aristotle considered the soul to be a material substance.