| Chapter 1: | The Augustinian Mutual Love Tradition |
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Augustine posited that an expression of love requires an object of affection.24 In the case of the mind loving itself, self-knowledge is the term or the object of the mind’s exertion of love. In an intellectual or spiritual nature, knowledge takes concrete form in a word. A word is a mental representation of the object that is under consideration.25 In this case, the concrete expression of knowledge, or the word, is the mind itself—that is, self-knowledge.26 Moreover, the mind’s self-knowledge matches itself identically and is therefore equal to the mind itself.27 Once the mind’s self-knowledge takes concrete form in the word, the word becomes the term for the mind’s expression of self-love.28 The result is that the word of self-knowledge is joined with the mind through the act of self-love.29
According to the triad of book 9, knowledge and love are relative attributes of the mind, and the mind/self signifies the substance of the mind. The problem, as Edmund Hill highlighted, is that “this trio thus represents, not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but God, Son, and Holy Spirit.”30 The Son and Spirit correlate with the intellectual and volitional faculties of God or the products of those faculties in the mind. However, one nuance is in order. Augustine expressly warned that in book 9 he was not yet speaking directly in terms of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but only of the imperfect human image.31 He was searching for an effective means to illustrate a Trinity that is ontologically one. Edwards also adopted the mental image of mind, understanding, and will/love to portray the Trinity, but unlike Augustine, he did not move to the more appropriate image of memory, understanding, and will.
The second mental triad consists of the mind remembering itself, understanding itself, and loving itself.32 In this second triad, the image resides in the mind’s activities and not in its capacities or faculties.33 Augustine believed that the three acts operate simultaneously in the human mind. The mind is ever present to itself—that is, remembering itself, understanding itself (through a word), and loving itself.34 However, for Augustine the activity of the human mind remembering, understanding, and loving itself is still not the clearest manner in which the human being images God.