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This chapter addresses the structure and chronology of Hilary's De Trinitate. It is argued that Hilary decided to compose De Trinitate before he started to write Book Seven. Toward that end, he revised his earlier treatises, De Fide (books two and three) and Adversus Arianos (books four to six), by writing new prefaces for them and adding new exegetical and theological arguments to reflect his mature understanding of the Trinity. Moreover, Hilary chose to write at this time Book One and affix it to the beginning of De Trinitate. In addition to determining when Hilary made his revisions, this chapter addresses the reasons, as revealed in his text, that led Hilary to make these changes.

The Introduction provides an overview of Hilary's De Trinitate and the state of the scholarly question on the structure and chronology of his treatise. The chapter also provides a detailed summary of the contents of the monograph and ends with a brief overview of the life of Hilary.

This chapter offers an historical survey of the place of Hilary in the history of Christian thought and ends with a summary of the editorial changes to Hilary's early works as discussed throughout the monograph.

In the tenth book of De Trinitate, Hilary of Poitiers gave extended consideration to the motive and meaning of three prayers from the passion narrative: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me” (Matt 26:39); “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34); and “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit” (Luke 23:46). All three prayers were used by the Arians in an attempt to establish the ontological inferiority of the Son to the Father. In fact, Hilary states that the latter two prayers comprise, together, the “chief weapons” in the Arian campaign to deny the divinity of the Son. This chapter focuses upon key ancient and medieval inquiries into the question: why did the Incarnate Son pray?

This chapter explores the two-part work, De Sancta et Vivifica Trinitate and De Incarnatione Domini. These works mark Theodoret's transition from Theodoret the anti-Arian and anti-Apollinarian to Theodoret the anti-Cyrillian. In their original form, they must pre-date 431, but the present form of De Incarnatione Domini shows the marks of hasty editing during the Nestorian controversy. It represents the fullest systematic presentation of Theodoret's early, firmly Antiochene Christology. Its editing in the heat of controversy gives us an indication of the way in which Theodoret was responding to the crisis of the Council of Ephesus.

In this paper, I explore Augustine’s account of sense cognition in book 11 of De Trinitate. His discussion in this context focuses on two types of sensory state—what he calls ‘outer vision’ and ‘inner vision,’ respectively. His analysis of both types of state is designed to show that cognitive acts involving external and internal sense faculties are susceptible of a kind of trinitarian analysis. A common way to read De Trin. 11, is to interpret Augustine’s account of ‘outer’ vision as an analysis of sense perception and his account of ‘inner’ vision as an analysis of occurrent sensory memory and imagination. I argue against such a reading of De Trin. 11. Insofar as we take perception to be a phenomenally conscious mode of sensory awareness, outer vision cannot, I claim, be the equivalent of ordinary sense perception. For, on Augustine’s view, the deliverances of outer vision only reach the threshold of consciousness, when outer vision occurs in conjunction with inner vision. Hence, on my analysis, sense perception turns out to be a complex, hybrid state—one that involves both outer and inner vision. If I am right, acts of sense perception turn out not to be directly susceptible to trinitarian analysis. Even so, the account is interesting and nuanced for all that.

This chapter discusses Augustine's role against Arianism. In his work On the Trinity, he was concerned to refute snide pagan critics who thought it absurd nonsense to speak of One being also Three. To maintain the equality of Father, Son, and Spirit, he judged it wise to affirm that the Son participated in the Spirit's ‘proceeding’ from the Father. This chapter also discusses the Filioque theme expressing the unity of the Trinity, De Trinitate, where Augustine concedes that the Father alone is the originating source of both the Son and the Holy Spirit. Augustine's great work on the Trinity shows his awareness of differences between Greek and Latin theology.

This chapter studies Thierry of Chartres’s attempts to clarify the relationship between mathematics and theology across his three known commentaries on Boethius’s De Trinitate. Having uncovered their proximity in his Genesis commentary, Thierry sought a universal theory of science that could coordinate knowledge of God and of the quadrivium. After failing in his first commentary, Thierry hits upon a solution in his second and third commentaries. The conceptual breakthrough comes with his notion of reciprocal folding. God is the en-folding (complicatio) of the world and the world is the un-folding (explicatio) of God. This allows Thierry to build a model of four modes of being that keep theology and mathematics in close connection with each other while remaining distinct. The chapter suggests ways in which Thierry’s theology of the quadrivium inadvertently retrieves elements of Neopythagoreanism from Philolaus, Archytas, Eudorus, Moderatus, and Nicomachus, all within the sphere of Augustinian Christianity.

This last chapter examines how the participatory metaphysic underwriting Augustine’s early theology continues to animate his mature theology of image. While mens is the principal locus of the imago dei, the chapter also addresses how De Trinitate speaks of the body in relation to the divine image. The brief analysis of the imago dei in De Trinitate makes clear that a Platonic participatory ontology continues to be the determining line of continuity between Augustine’s early and later theologies of the image of God. Augustine’s mature thought affirms that an ontology of the human person qua image is intelligible only within a dynamic Platonic participatory metaphysic of return. Because the imago dei implies a supernatural orientation, Augustine cannot conceive of human life as independent from the God in whom we live and move and have our being. Augustine’s mature theology of image is underwritten by the real relation on the part of the creature to God, which marks and sustains all finite being.

This long chapter focusses on De Trinitate, with particular emphasis on books 12-14. Attention is paid to the over-arching argument of a complicated text, but the focus is on memory and the abiding centrality of the image-trinity that is founded in the same: the human soul as memory, intellect and will. The epistemological role of sense perception comes to the fore again, and the centrality of the Incarnation brings the more abstract trinitarian speculation into focus: faith in the true mediator gives access to the divine life that unites the temporal and the eternal.

This chapter continues the investigation regarding possibilities for a porous mode of enquiry by turning to Augustine’s appropriation of the Johannine tradition. It is argued that for Augustine friendship becomes a kind of intimate knowledge of the deepest rudiments of reality as one comes to ‘know that love with which one loves more dearly than the brother whom one loves’ (De Trinitate). Likewise, enquiry becomes a kind of friendship as one comes to know only through ever deeper communion with the ‘Inner Teacher’ (Christ) who guides one into the truth of reality. Augustine’s illuminationism thus points to the possibility for an overarching economy of friendship in which being, knowing and loving become ever more intertwined.

Inseparably involved in the transforming work of Christ is the Holy Spirit. Yet the Holy Spirit relates to the human will in a manner unique to the Holy Spirit’s own divine person. After addressing the connection of Christ’s work upon the will to that of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit’s role in enabling right human willing, this chapter investigates how the human will images the Holy Spirit in De Trinitate, thereby demonstrating how Augustine’s understanding of the human will is essentially connected to his account of the Trinitarian relations. The Holy Spirit’s involvement in Augustine’s concept of the human will takes place not only on the level of analogy but also on the level of concrete intervention. Since this loving activity is specifically the activity of the Holy Spirit, Augustine’s account of will has a distinctively triune, and therefore distinctively Christian, character.

The Introduction presents the central argument of the book and the rationale behind it. This involves placing the argument in conversation with past and current scholarship on Hilary of Poitiers, and clarifying why this study is needed. Hilary’s thought is often either overlooked in favor of more approachable figures of the period or seen to be incoherent, as readers have difficulty systematizing or categorizing his work. The Introduction states that it is by approaching Hilary’s thought through the framework of his overarching trinitarian anthropology that its ingenuity, impact, and internal coherence can be fully appreciated. An outline of the chapters of the book and their central arguments is also given.

Chapter 3 offers a list of Didymus’ known works, lost and extant, alongside a summary overview of his writings, including the finding of the Toura Commentaries and Lecture-Notes. The codices found at Toura are described and brief attention is given to the various scholarly theories connecting a wide array of anonymous or pseudonymous fourth-century theological works to the authentic On the Holy Spirit, including the De Trinitate discovered by Mingarelli and pseudo-Basil’s Adversus Eunomium 4?5. However, no firm conclusions are drawn beyond the possible connection to a Didymean ‘circle’ or broad theological trajectory.