A monumental achievement! Augustine truly gets at the heart of the Trinity and brings about a clearer picture of this complex doctrine. If you are a believer you must read this book!

When I first got my hands on this translation (published by NCP), I was pretty excited... And I enjoyed it overall. I take issue with Augustine at several points in his theology... his understanding of our Lord's sovereignty, his soteriological anthropology etc... but I now, having read this, I also take issue with his theological method and conclusions regarding the Trinity... in the end, ultimately too Western for me... also at times flirts too heavily with autonomous reason and logic and not enough on exegesis and the mind of the church...
All of that said, now, let me qualify a lot of that. Augustine is truly blessed by God, he was a man of deep and radical repentance and MANY MANY good things to write... One can read almost anything that he wrote with great benefit. So, what ever I say, know that it is a matter of mere subjective opinion, not as one who is remotely qualified to comment of this deer and venerable brother in the Lord.

Read excerpts for class.

Dr. McCall you’re a crazy man for making me read this in 2 weeks

Incredible. Augustine develops a psychological model of the Trinity by examining triadic patterns in human subjectivity: being, knowing, willing; memory, intellect, and will; mind, knowledge, and love; the lover, the beloved, and the love that unites them; thinking, speaking, and willing. These patterns are put in place to serve as imaginative exercises for speaking and thinking about God.

It's wonderful, and at times a bit weird.

Skimmed most

Required reading for trinitarian studies as this is the basis for all other works of trinitarian theology. Though Augustine goes off the path into other matters at times, the entire work is stimulating. Perhaps the strongest aspect is its devotional and affectual nature which should serve as an example to all those engaged in theological discourse.

While there are some good arguments within the book, I found it repetitive and very difficult to follow. His line of thought is so alien to mine that it's difficult to say what I've learned.

I absolutely loved this book. If, for the only reason, the challenge of the complexity of the read. St. Augustine was one of the most brilliant minds our world has ever seen, apparent in his other works. This, however was the most challenging, definitely in a good way. This is not a book to read, of you are a fast reader. One really needs to take their time and contemplate this. There are definitely some hard theological debates going on this book. If you can get through some of the harder concepts, it is well worth the effort

This is worth all the time and effort one will expend in reading De Trinitate. May Augustine’s devotion of the glory of the Triune God spur you on and be an encouragement to you. Anyone who wants to understand trinitarian development hardly has any better starting place than Augustine, for he incorporates and works out many of the earlier Church Father’s thought with great synthesis while at the same time carefully avoiding some of their errors. May Augustine’s devotion of the glory of the Triune God spur you on and be an encouragement to you.

Hard to review a book like this. Before getting into it, I just wanted to acknowledge that Augustine is a master theologian, exegete, scholar, philosopher, and thinker. It's always a blast getting to read his works.

To begin, I'd just like offer a word of praise to Edmund Hill for his incredible helpful, insightful, and often times funny introduction and footnotes. I'll add some quotes from them at the bottom of this review. He makes the point that Augustine's big three works (Confessions, City of God, and the Trinity) work as a kind of trilogy. "So in the Confessions we have the history of his own personal drama...in The City of God we have the dramatic history of the Church...But in the De Trinitate, with a stroke of almost unconscious genius, we are presented with the dramatic history of God" (Intro, 3-4).

The first seven (of fifteen) books of The Trinity effectively and elegantly argue for the traditional understanding of God as a trinity, consisting of one God in three persons, consubstantial, coeternal, inseparable in both being and work, yet distinct in terms of relationship. The Father is the Father of the Son, the Son is the Son of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son (Gal. 4:6; Matt. 10:20). All three are God, yet they are one God.

Augustine, in the first seven books, demonstrates the "unity and equality of that supreme trinity...from the scriptures" (pg. 507), addressing the questions that might arise in opposition to this view when looking at the divine procession of the Spirit and the "begotten-ness" of the Son. He digresses for two entire books (and I'm very glad he did) on Old Testament theophanies (appearances of God) and the work of angels in the Bible as they relate to the Trinity and the functions of the persons. He then has a book on the work of the Son in time as Mediator - full of rich quotes and sometimes really difficult to understand. Next, Augustine speaks to the linguistic and logical issues of person, substance, relationship, divine simplicity, and the categories of Aristotle in relation to God as trinity in books five through seven. He specifically tackles the seeming problem of the Son being the wisdom and power of God (c.f. 1 Cor. 1:24, 30). (Is the Son the wisdom of the Father in that the Father is without wisdom without the Son?)

In books eight through fifteen, things become a bit more complicated. Hill titles book eight as "Through the Looking-glass," and I do believe this is appropriate. From this point onwards, Augustine's platonism begins to shine forth in discussion of the goodness and truth of God, though with the Christian element of the prerequisites of faith and love. Ultimately, Augustine begins to search for a reflection of the trinity of God in the world and narrows down his hunt in the next six books in man, specifically the part of man that gives him the honor of being called "the image of God" (1 Cor. 11:7).

Augustine finally settles on the remembering, understanding, and willing or loving (as the joint between the two) within the mind as that which best reflects the trinity of God in man. While these three vaguely mirror the eternal Exemplar, they fail in a variety of matters to be a true reflection of the real Trinity (for reasons of finitude, poor unity, and in their being under one mind as opposed to the Father, Son, and Spirit being one God, not under one God).

Ultimately, Augustine humbly concedes to the transcendence of the One he sought to elucidate to his readers, confessing his inability to find a clear reflection of the Trinity in the creation. His epilogue and prayer to conclude are incredible.

Favorite quotes:
“And when we come to the New Testament we find that the economy of redemption and sanctification, that is to say the mission of the Son and the Spirit, reveals to us the eternal mystery of the divine processions, and that redemption and sanctification are completed by our being admitted into a participation in that mystery, by being adopted into the Sonship of the Son, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Hill, Intro, 93).

"For the fullness of our happiness...is this: to enjoy God the three" (Augustine, 1.18)

“The whole series of all times is timelessly contained in God’s eternal Wisdom” (2.9)
*footnote 17: "God remains outside history, outside the drama of human destiny and salvation; but the history and the drama are really inside God"

“Nor, on the other hand, can we pass from being among the things that originated to eternal things, unless the eternal allied himself to us in our originate condition, and so provided us with a bridge to his eternity” (4.24).

“But we by pressing on imitate him who abides motionless; we follow him who stands still, and by walking in him we move toward him, because for us he became a road or way in time by his humility, while being for us an eternal abode by his divinity” (7.5).

“That is why in the gospel it did not just stop when it had said that Jesus 'gave those who received him the right to become sons of God,' and briefly explained what receiving him meant by saying 'to those who believe in his name,' and then had shown how they would become sons of God by adding that that 'are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of the man, by of God' (Jn. 1:12). But in case this feebleness that is man, which we see and carry around with us, should despair of attaining such eminence, it went on to say, ‘And the Word came flesh and dwelt amongst us’ (Jn. 1:14), in order to convince us of what might seem incredible by showing us its opposite” (13.12).

"There is such potency in this image of God in it that it is capable of cleaving to him whose image it is" (14.20).