| Chapter 1: | The Augustinian Mutual Love Tradition |
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simple, being and knowing are indivisible. For God to know Godself by a Word entails the being or existence of the Word as precisely that which it represents; hence, the Son as the divine Word is a subsistence of the divine nature.52
The Holy Spirit as the Mutual Love of the Father and the Son
The Holy Spirit proceeds as the love or the will of God.53 However, whereas the Father alone begets the Son, the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, although it proceeds principally from the Father.54 The Spirit’s procession is not a linear movement from the Father and then through the Son; rather, the Spirit proceeds simultaneously from the Father and the Son.55 Augustine understood the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son in terms of love. By virtue of the double procession of the Spirit as love, the Spirit unites the Father and Son in a communion of mutual love.56 The Holy Spirit’s identity as the love of God derives from the Spirit’s unitive function.57 The mutual love model receives its name from the Spirit’s role as the immanent mutual love that unites the Father and the Son.
From Economic Missions to Immanent Processions
Augustine’s trinitarian theology methodologically begins with the economic missions of the divine persons and then moves to their immanent processions. More specifically, he started with the Incarnation. He did so because the Incarnation is the epistemic foundation of knowledge of the triune God. The movement of his thought from the divine persons’ economic missions to their immanent processions stands in contrast to the common view that assumes that Augustine started with the unity of God and the psychological analogies. The mental triads serve to illustrate the triune God that is already inferred from the missions of the Son and the Spirit. For Augustine, knowledge of the immanent relations and processions arises from the economic missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit. In regard to the continuity between the missions and processions, Edmund Hill stated that “the economic Trinity is the Trinity revealed” and therefore, the economic Trinity discloses the immanent Trinity.58 Accordingly,