Luigi Gioia provides a fresh description and analysis of Augustine's monumental treatise, De Trinitate, working on a supposition of its unity and its coherence from structural, rhetorical, and theological points of view. The main arguments of the treatise are reviewed first: Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity; discussion of 'Arian' logical and ontological categories; a comparison between the process of knowledge and formal aspects of the confession of the mystery of the Trinity; an account of the so called 'psychological analogies'. These topics hold a predominantly instructive or polemical function. The unity and the coherence of the treatise become apparent especially when its description focuses on a truly theological understanding of knowledge of God: Augustine aims at leading the reader to the vision and enjoyment of God the Trinity, in whose image we are created. This mystagogical aspect of the rhetoric of De Trinitate is unfolded through Christology, soteriology, doctrine of the Holy Spirit and doctrine of revelation. At the same time, from the vantage point of love, Augustine detects and powerfully depicts the epistemological consequences of human sinfulness, thus unmasking the fundamental deficiency of received theories of knowledge. Only love restores knowledge and enables philosophers to yield to the injunction which resumes philosophical enterprise as a whole, namely 'know thyself'.
About the AuthorLuigi Gioia is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical University of S. Anselmo, Rome.
ReviewsGioia has provided us with a stimulating work of lucid and detailed scholarship which will be required reading for all who wish seriously to grapple with Augustine's monumental, but too frequently either overlooked or misrepresented, treatise. * Angus Morrison, Scottish Journal of Theology *
Book InformationISBN 9780198779209
Author Luigi Gioia, OSBFormat Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Oxford University PressPublisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 526g
Dimensions(mm) 232mm * 156mm * 19mm