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A PUZZLE ABOUT DIVINE PERSONHOOD IN DE TRINITATE, VII AND VIII
Nathaniel E. Bulthuis
In the second half of book 7 of Augustine’s De Trinitate, Augustine addresses a certain
puzzle about the God of Christianity, concerned with the nature of divine personhood.1 God is
claimed to be three persons, but that multiplicity of persons seems incongruous with the
simplicity of the divine essence. Any adequate articulation of divine personhood, then, must
respect that simplicity. Though it can handle aspects unique to each divine person, the logical
apparatus Augustine develops in book 5 of De Trinitate is unable to explicate the nature of
divine personhood itself, and so provide a solution to this puzzle. This inability to provide a
proper understanding of divine personhood leaves Augustine searching in book 7 for another sort
of explanation of divine personhood. However, while some progress is made, Augustine does not
discover an adequate explanation of it in that book.
Yet Augustine does not abandon his search for a solution to this puzzle at the end of book
7.2 Rather, at the conclusion of that book, he provides a diagnosis of why our attempts to
1 The content of this puzzle is set out earlier in the work, in book 5. But Augustine gives no indication there that
there is in fact a puzzle to be solved, rather than merely a problem of Nicene trinitarianism to be tolerated. See Aug., trin., V,9,10.
2 This fact seems to me to have gone largely unnoticed in the literature, evidenced by the way in which the structure of the work is typically viewed. Though individual accounts vary, a feature common to many is that book 7 is regarded as part of a unit of the work distinct from that unit to which book 8 belongs. Edmund Hill, for example, argues that books 1-7 and 9-15 constitute the two main parts of De Trinitate, book 8 serving as a transitional book. See E. Hill (cur.), The Trinity, New City Press, Hyde Park, New York 1991 (The Works of Saint Augustine, 5), 18-27. That books 1-7 constitute a major unit of the work is echoed by Luigi Gioia, who argues that ‹‹the treatment of books 1 to 7 as a single unity is crucially important for the correct interpretation of Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity›› (L. Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, Oxford University Press, New York 2008, 24). See also H. Chadwick, Augustine, Oxford University Press, New York 1986, 91; B. Studer, Augustins De Trinitate. Eine Einführung, Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, 79. Others have argued (correctly, in my opinion) that books 1-4 and 5-15 constitute the two major units of the text, the former devoted to providing a biblical foundation for a Nicene formulation of the Christian faith and the latter devoted to a philosophical justification of that formulation. See E. Hendrikx, Introduction in M. Mellet-Th. Camelot (cur.), La
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understand divine personhood have so far failed, and a call to intellectual ascent by which that
failure can be overcome. Book 8, informed by this diagnosis, undertakes that very process of
ascent, a process which results in Augustine’s fascinating investigation of the human mind in the
latter books of De Trinitate. Book 8 thus continues the search for a solution to a puzzle about
divine personhood articulated in book 7, and so constitutes a further step in an inquiry into the
nature of divine personhood itself. As a consequence, the investigation into the nature of the
human mind that begins in book 9 is itself part of that larger theological inquiry. There are
important lessons to be drawn from this consequence, two of which I highlight.
1. Augustine on Relative Predication
To understand what is at issue at the end of book 7, we need first to look earlier in the
work, to the philosophical conclusions of book 5. In that book, Augustine considers an Arian
objection to a trinitarian conception of God.3 Augustine’s interlocutors argue that
whatever is said or understood about God is said not according to accident but according
to substance. Accordingly, to be unbegotten is [said] of the Father according to substance,
and to be begotten is [said] of the Son according to substance. However, to be unbegotten
and to be begotten are different. Therefore, the substance of the Father is different than
Trinité, Institut d’etudes augustiniennes, Paris 1955 (Oeuvres De Saint Augustin. Texte De l’Edition Benedictine, 15), 17-21; G. Matthews (cur.), On the Trinity, Books 8-15, Cambridge University Press, New York 2002, ix-xii. But accounts of this sort still regard books 5-7 and 8-15 as distinct sub-units of that second unit. A consequence of my argument for both sorts of accounts is that a strong division between books 7 and 8 can no longer be maintained. What I think this suggests is that the typical motivation for structural analyses of this sort – that book 5-7 are directed towards a project distinct from that of books 8-15 – is at least to some extent misguided. My own view is that we find in books 5-15 a largely unified philosophical inquiry into the divine Trinity, motivated by a series of interconnected and increasingly difficult puzzles about that Trinity. (For a third sort of analysis, according to which the work divides into three distinct units – books 1-4, 5-7, and 8-15 – see G. Madec, “Inquisitione proficiente”. Pour une lecture “saine” du De Trinitate d'Augustin, in J. Brachtendorf (cur.), Gott und sein Bild. Augustins De Trinitate im Spiegel gegenwärtiger Forschung, F. Schöningh, Padeborn 2000, 61-8; E. Bermon, Analyse du “De Trinitate” de Saint Augustin in M. Caron (cur.), Saint Augustin, Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2009 (Les Cahiers d'Histoires de la Philosophie), 53-76).
3 On the Arian context of the argument, see M. Barnes, De Trinitate VI and VII: Augustine and the Limits of Nicene Orthodoxy, ‹‹Aug. Stud.››, 38 (2007), 189-202.
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that of the Son.4
Augustine agrees with his interlocutors that nothing can be said of God according to accident.
We can truly predicate nothing of God accidentally because such predication requires that its
subject is capable of change. Thus ‘unbegotten’ and ‘begotten’ cannot be predicated accidentally,
for that would entail that that of which each is predicated is something changeable, something
Augustine rejects because ‹‹there is nothing in [God] that can be changed or lost››.5 Augustine’s
Arian interlocutors conclude, then, that everything must be predicated of God according to
substance, such that a given predicate expresses not a quality of God but God himself, who is a
substance.6 And, since that substance which is God cannot be both unbegotten and begotten, the
Father and the Son must be different substances, and so not both God, who is ‹‹that unchanging
and eternal substance which is incomparably more simple than the human soul››.7
Augustine’s response to this argument is to suggest another way in which we can speak
about God. This way is what Augustine calls predication ‹‹according to a relative›› or what I will
call relative predication.8 Augustine is at pains to emphasize that this kind of predication is not
merely a kind of predication according to accident. True accidental predication requires the
changeability of its underlying subject, since the predicate expresses an accident which inheres in
its subject and so can be lost by that subject. But Augustine argues that relative predication does
4 Aug., trin., V,3,4 (CCL 50, 208): «Quidquid de deo dicitur uel intellegitur non secundum accidens sed secundum
substantiam dicitur. Quapropter ingenitum esse patri secundum substantiam est, et genitum esse filio secundum snbstantiam est. Diuersum est autem ingenitum esse et genitum esse; diuersa est ergo substantia patris et filii»
5 Aug., trin., V,4,5 (CCL 50, 209).
6 Augustine speaks of substantial predication throughout books 5-7, but he notes in his introduction to this sort of predication that, in the case of the godhead at least, it would be better if we called it essential predication, since God is not properly speaking a substance. See Aug., trin., V,2,3.
7 Aug., trin., VI,5,6 (CCL 50, 234).
8 Secundum relativum. See Aug., trin., V,4,6.
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not require the possibility of change in its subject, for what is predicated relatively of a subject is
not something distinct from that subject, but rather is an expression of that very subject, as
relative to another.9 Since the Father is God, and so eternal and unchangeable, and since ‘father’
is a term of relation, it must be said eternally with reference to another - that is, to an offspring.
God the Father, then, ensures the co-eternality of God the Son, for only in that way is God the
Father a father. The same holds for God the Son, since ‘son’ too is here a relative term. Thus,
according to Augustine, ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are terms said neither according to accident, since
every accidental predication requires the changeability of its underlying subject, nor according to
substance, since each is said of a subject not with reference to that subject itself but rather with
reference to another. Instead Augustine argues that they are predicates of a kind distinct from
either of these two, such that God the Father is, and must be, eternally related to God the Son, for
only in that way is the former a father and the latter a son.
Augustine uses the distinction between relative and substantial predication to distinguish
between those things which are uniquely said of either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit,
and those which are said singularly of the godhead, and so commonly of each of the divine
persons.10 ‘Unbegotten’ and ‘begotten’, to return to the predicates initially at issue, are each said
uniquely of one of the divine persons and are, consequently, relative terms. Augustine employs
this distinction in books 5 through 7 to help us understand how it is, and so to provide a defense
9 Augustine argues that something can be predicated relatively only of God, since ‹‹in created and mutable things
what is not said according to substance can only be said according to accident›› (Aug., trin., V,4,6 (CCL 50, 210)). However, Augustine does seem to suggest later in the text that something can be said relatively of a creature as well (see infra note 14). Perhaps we can distinguish between an improper and a proper sense of relative predication. Predicating a term such as ‘father’ of a creature is improperly called relative predication, since such predication is in fact a kind of accidental predication. Predicating that term of a divine person, however, is properly called relative predication. Yet, because of a shared logical character, improper relative predication can serve to explicate for us the nature of proper relative predication.
10 See Aug., trin., V,8,9; V,11,12.
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of the claim that, some given feature is peculiar to one of the divine persons alone without
abandoning the simple unity of the divine being. Relative terms are predicated of a subject but
with reference to another (ad aliquid), not with reference to that subject itself (ad se), and so,
argues Augustine, predicates said of one of the divine persons alone do not in any way threaten
the unity and simplicity of that being to which each of the divine persons is identical.11
But left unanswered so far is the perhaps more profound issue of the nature of the subject
of such predicates - that is, the nature of a divine person himself. Unlike terms uniquely said of
one of the divine persons, ‘person’ itself can be said univocally of each divine person. And yet,
unlike all other terms said univocally of each divine person, it cannot be said singularly of the
godhead. God is, after all, not a person but three persons. So it seems that ‘person’ expresses
something quite unlike the terms of either sort that we have considered so far. An adequate
articulation of what this predicate expresses is the project Augustine begins in the second half of
book 7, and it is, I argue, the dominant project of the rest of the work. In the next section, then, I
want to look closely at the second half of book 7 itself, both to motivate the claim that this is
indeed the issue that Augustine is concerned with there and to see how the end of book 7 serves
as a foundation for the philosophical inquiry Augustine conducts in book 8.
2. Initial Analyses of the Puzzle in Book 7
At first glance, Augustine seems to suggest in the second half of book 7 that Latin
orthodoxy’s use of the term ‘person’ is motivated less by principle than by pragmatism.
Augustine writes that the Latin church has agreed to say that there are three persons ‹‹in order to
be able to say something when asked what the three are››.12 But there are two issues at play here.
11 See Aug., trin., V,11,12.
12 Aug., trin., VII,4,7 (CCL 50, 255).
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One concerns the term ‘person’ itself; Augustine readily admits that the use of that term rather
than some other is for the most part pragmatic. The other, however, is a far deeper and more
philosophically exciting issue. That issue concerns the metaphysical reality that the term ‘person’
is meant to express.
One of Augustine’s more interesting solutions in book 7 to our puzzle about the nature of
divine personhood relies unsurprisingly on his earlier distinction between substantial and relative
predication. Augustine suggests that ‘person’, like, e.g., ‘father’, is predicated not substantially
but rather relatively.
If ‘being’ is predicated substantially, and ‘person’ relatively, then we could call Father
and Son and Holy Spirit three persons in the same way as we talk about three friends or
three neighbors or three relatives with reference to each other, not with reference to
himself.13
Everything said substantially of any of the divine persons appears to be said singularly and
substantially of the godhead itself. Terms such as ‘one’, ‘being’, and ‘truth’ are said not relative
to another but with reference to the subject of which they are predicated. Since everything said
singularly of the godhead is said substantially, if ‘person’ were a relative term, this would
explain why we cannot predicate ‘person’ singularly of the godhead. For ‘person’ would not be
said with reference to the subject of which it is predicated but would rather be said relative to the
other members of the Trinity. And so, in the same way that we can say that God is Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, without any compromise to divine simplicity, so too we can say that God is
three persons, since ‘person’, like ‘Father’, ‘Son’, and ‘Holy Spirit’, would be a relative
13 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 261-2): «Sic dicamus tres personas patrem et filium et spiritum sanctum
quemadmodum dicuntur aliqui tres amici aut tres propinqui aut tres uicini quod sint ad inuicem, non quod unusquisque eorum sit ad se ipsum»
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predicate and so not express the substance of its subject.
According to a position of this sort, divine personhood would be logically posterior to
divine essence. Relative predication depends upon some substance as its subject, as Augustine
himself acknowledges. Augustine writes in book 7 that
every being that is called something relatively is called something besides a
relative [...]. If one was not called a human being, that is some substance, there
would be nothing there that could be called master according to relation.14
But substantial predication in no way logically entails that something can be predicated of its
subject relatively, since substantial predication does not logically require that the subject of such
predication is related to some other subject. Substantial predication is therefore logically prior to
that of relative predication, for relative predication logically entails that something can be
predicated of its subject substantially, whereas substantial predication does not logically entail
that something can be predicated of its subject relatively.15 As Augustine has already admitted in
book 5, those things said uniquely of each divine person are predicated relatively. If ‘person’ too
were a relative predicate, there would then be no non-relative predicate which would serve to
mark out any of the divine persons. And so divine personhood would be logically posterior to
divine essence, for anything predicated substantially of the divine expresses only its simple
essence, and it does not logically follow that we can predicate something relatively of the divine.
Any predicate expressing divine personhood, however, will be predicated relatively, and so it
would follow that we can predicate something substantially of it as well.
14 Aug., trin., VII,1,2 (CCL 50, 247): «Huc accedit quia omnis essentia quae relatiue dicitur est etiam aliquid
excepto relatiuo [...] si non esset homo, id est aliqua substantia, non esset qui relatiue dominus diceretur»
15 Augustine would agree, I take it, that substantial predication metaphysically entails that something can be predicated of its subject relatively (at least in the case of the divine; see supra note 9).
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But Augustine is keen to defend a more robust understanding of orthodox trinitarianism,
an understanding according to which the predicate ‘person’ is as logically fundamental as any of
the predicates said of God which express his simple essence. Augustine writes of his suggestion
that ‘person’ is a relative term that ‹‹this is not how ‘person’ is typically spoken in any context;
nor in the case of the Trinity do we express anything else when we say the person of the Father
but the substance of the Father››.16 ‘Person’, then, is predicated not relatively but substantially,
and thus is said, e.g., with reference to that very substance of which ‘Father’ is predicated.17 To
say that God is three persons is to say of God himself that he is three unique substances, even
though he is only one being, one essence, one substance.18 So the distinction between substantial
and relative predication will not serve to fully illuminate for us the metaphysics of divine
personhood, and we do not yet have a solution to the puzzle which motivates our inquiry.19 But it
does advance that inquiry, since our conclusions here entail that there is at least one predicate
predicated substantially of each of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit which cannot
moreover be predicated singularly of the godhead. And so at least Augustine’s task is made
clearer – it is to provide for himself and for his readers a way of understanding a being that is not
16 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 262): «Sed neque persona ita dici alicubi solet, neque in hac trinitate cum dicimus
personam patris aliud dicimus quam substantiam patris. Quocirca ut substantia patris ipse pater est, non quo pater est sed quo est; ita et persona patris non aliud quam ipse pater est. Ad se quippe dicitur persona, non ad filium uel spiritum sanctum; sicut ad se dicitur deus et magnus et bonus et iustus et si quid aliud huiusmodi. Et quemadmodum hoc illi est esse quod deum esse, quod magnum, quod bonum esse, ita hoc illi est esse quod personam esse»
17 On this point, see L. Ladaria, Persona y Relacion en el De Trinitate de San Agustin, ‹‹Misc. Com.››, 30 (1972), 273-4. Others have argued that, for Augustine, the notion of divine personhood is a “relational concept.” See W.R. O'Connor, The Concept of the Person in Saint Augustine's De Trinitate, ‹‹Aug. Stud.››, 13 (1982), 137-8; also A. Trapé, I termini “natura” e “persona” nella teologia trinitaria di S. Agostino, ‹‹Augustinianum›› 13 (1973), 586-7.
18 See Aug., trin., V,1,3, where Augustine identifies God as a substance.
19 On the question of the relationship between the substantial and relative aspects of the divine persons, see Ladaria, Persona y Relacion, 275-83. See also P. Henry, Saint Augustine on Personality, The Macmillan Company, New York 1960, 23.
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just relatively but substantially three without compromising the absolute simplicity of that being.
Augustine’s response to the failure of this approach seems to be philosophical
capitulation, writing that ‹‹the reason why we do not call these three together one person […] is
that we want to keep at least one word for signifying what we mean by Trinity, so that we are not
simply reduced to silence when we are asked “three what?”››.20 But then Augustine brings his
readers back to his interlocutors’ initial question - what are these three? - and he revisits an
assumption which so far has governed his response to it. The solutions that Augustine has
considered thus far have been governed by the assumption that any adequate reply to such a
question needs to be a term of either species or genus. ‹‹So when the question is asked “three
what?” we apply ourselves to finding some name of genus or species which will comprise these
three››.21 Such an assumption seems reasonable. As Augustine notes in book 6, while ‘one’ can
be predicated of two subjects to signify sameness of being, the question ‹‹one what?››
immediately adds a qualification, and thus seems to demand a reply either in terms of a species
or in terms of a genus.22 The same appears to be true in regards to the divine Trinity; asking what
these three are immediately sets one on the task of looking for some appropriate genus or
species.
But it looks like any response in terms of species or genus is bound to fail. Earlier in
book 7, Augustine notes that a term of genus denotes what is common to a class of different
kinds of things.23 Taking ‘person’ as a generic term, ‘person’ denotes something common to the
20 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 262).
21 Aug., trin., VII,4,7 (CCL 50, 255).
22 Aug., trin., VI,3,4 (CCL 50, 232).
23 See Aug., trin., VII,4,7-8.
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Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But, Augustine argues, if we ought to say that there are three
persons, then we ought likewise to say that there are three beings. For the term ‘being’ too is a
term denoting something common to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But God is one
being, not three beings. Thus taking ‘person’ as a term of genus does not successfully solve our
puzzle.
But taking that term as a term of species is equally problematic. In an extended
discussion of the use of generic and specific terms later in book 7, Augustine notes that any reply
to a question about what these three are will have to be plural in nature. This fact renders
incoherent an account of divine personhood according to which ‘person’ is a term of species,
falling under some higher-order genus. As Augustine notes, ‹‹a species is not said in the plural
and a genus in the singular››.24 If ‘person’ is meant to denote a species of the divine being, then
the fact that there are three persons requires that there are also, e.g., three beings, since the term
‘being’, which denotes something common to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, must be a term of
the genus under which the species person falls. Whether we take ‘person’ to be a term of genus
or a term of species, then, it seems that our account of divine personhood will not solve our
puzzle, precisely because taking that term in either way fails to respect the absolute simplicity of
the divine essence.
Augustine’s initial deliberations about ‘person’ either as a term of species or as a term of
genus rested in thinking of ‘person’ as a substantial predicate, and as substantial predicates said
of the divine either as related to one another as species to genus or as both related to the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit as something generically common to them. The failure of those
deliberations is what prompts Augustine to try to apply to this problem his earlier distinction
24 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 256).
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between substantial and relative predication. Such a maneuver would, if successful, both respect
‘person’ and predicates said singularly of the godhead as terms of species or genera while
avoiding the unseemly consequence that, e.g., there are three divine beings. For ‘person’ would
be a relative term, whereas, e.g., ‘being’ would be a substantial term. Consequently concerns
about singular and plural predication would be mollified by an equivocation in the kind of
predication at issue. But following the inapplicability of this distinction to the puzzle at hand,
Augustine returns to the initial assumption itself, abandoning the claim that a proper articulation
of divine personhood needs to be cast in terms of species or genera. The abandonment of this
assumption frees Augustine to look for another method according to which divine personhood
can be understood, one in which the relevant objects are understood as related to one another in a
way different than as genera, species and individuals.
3. A Different Approach to the Puzzle
Augustine’s change of tack in his inquiry is rather sudden. ‹‹Or is it like our saying that
three humans of the same sex, the same physique and the same soul are one nature››.25 It is clear
that Augustine thinks the example is beneficial as an analogy of the divine Trinity in at least one
respect. ‘Nature’ is what the ancients, lacking a term such as ‘being’, employed in its stead, and
so it seems that the types of objects in the example – humans and their shared nature – are
relevantly similar to the divine Trinity. But how is this example any different from what has been
said already? Are we not, in other words, still employing species and genera in this example?
Augustine argues that we are not. ‹‹So now we are not talking anymore in terms of genus and
species, but as if according to the same common material››.26 The analogy clearly works in one
25 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 263).
26 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 264).
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way: it has three persons (that is, three humans) all of whom have one nature, one “common
material.” If we were speaking strictly in terms of genera and species, it would seem that such an
example would be incoherent, as Augustine’s earlier considerations about generic and specific
predication suggest. For those considerations forced us to conclude that saying truly of the
godhead that there are three persons entails that there are also, e.g., three beings. The fact that the
claim that there are three humans which share one nature strikes us as felicitous suggests at least
that the terms at issue – ‘human’ and ‘nature’ – are not being used specifically or generically.
But it also appears that Augustine thinks this example, by itself, does not elucidate for us
clearly enough the kind of relationship between divine personhood and divine essence that he is
attempting to describe. For he immediately goes on to provide another possible analogy of the
divine Trinity.27 In this example, three statues subsist out of gold, and so we have three statues
and yet only one material common to them – gold.28 Augustine emphasizes that we are not
employing in this example a distinction between species and genus, nor even a distinction
between species and individuals. It is not the case, for instance, that ‘gold’ is being used here as a
generic term and ‘statue’ a specific term because ‹‹no species extends beyond the definition of its
genus››.29 In other words, if the example of the three statues depends on a distinction between
genus and species, then it needs to be the case that a statue, as a species, is defined by the
27 Augustine’s fairly quick transition to another example might be due to the fact that the example of three humans
sharing one common nature does not seem to escape generic and specific predication as successfully as Augustine needs it. ‘Nature’ appears to be a count-noun, which consequently lends itself to specific and generic predication. Augustine’s second example, which employs ‘gold’, a mass-noun, seems to avoid these worries better. Richard Cross makes a similar point. See R. Cross, Quid Tres? On What Precisely Augustine Professes Not to Understand in De Trinitate 5 and 7, ‹‹Harvard theol. Rev.››, 100 (2007), 227.
28 In his commentary on Psalm 68, Augustine explains the essential unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit by noting that it is as «if the Father is gold, the Son is gold, and the Holy Spirit is gold» (Aug., in Psalm., 68,1,5 (CCL 39, 905)). Unlike in De Trinitate, however, Augustine gives no indication in that work that such an analogy is inadequate.
29 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 264).
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relevant genus (here gold) along with a certain differentia which distinguishes it from other
species falling under the same genus. But it is clear that statues can be constructed from material
other than gold, such as clay or marble. So ‘statue’ cannot be used here as a species term,
denoting a species of the (putative) genus gold.
It is also not the case that gold in the example is a species and the statues individuals
within that species.30 For ‹‹no species extends beyond its individuals to include something
outside››.31 In other words, a specific definition encompasses all and only the individuals
included in that definition. But, as Augustine notes, many other things besides statues are made
of gold, such as rings, and sometimes nothing at all is made out of some gold – it’s just an
unformed lump. For ‘gold’ to be a true species term requires that no further differentiae can be
made among its members. But this is clearly not true in the present case, since each golden
statue, as a statue, does not differ from the other two, and yet each differs from golden objects
which are not statues. So it seems that the relevant terms in Augustine’s example cannot be terms
of species and genera, or of species and individuals. And that seems to be just what we need,
since any interpretation of the relationship between the persons and the being of God which
employs terms of species and of genus is bound to fail.
Augustine’s examples, especially his example of the three golden statues, seem to
provide a better explanation of the divine Trinity than have any of our attempts at understanding
the nature of divine personhood in terms of a species or a genus. In the examples Augustine
provides, the mere fact that there are three objects of a particular kind, be they humans or statues,
30 Augustine had earlier in the text quickly considered, and just as quickly rejected, the proposal that ‘being’ is a
specific term and ‘person’ a term for an individual. Augustine is thus paralleling this example with the relations of genus, species, and individual that he had considered earlier in the text, in order to show that it is unlike any of those relations. See Aug., trin., VII,6,11.
31 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 264).
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does not compromise the unity of the material common to them. This at least suggests that the
best solution to our puzzle will explain divine personhood in non-specific, non-generic terms.32
Furthermore, Augustine’s approach to the problem has also shifted, for instead of employing
tools of logical and linguistic analysis – tools that have failed to articulate for us the metaphysics
of divine personhood – his approach now is to provide fitting analogies of the divine Trinity,
analogies which can explicate for us how the substantial existence of the three divine persons
does not threaten the simplicity of the essence common to them.
But Augustine quickly makes clear that the examples he has developed in book 7 do not
provide a proper solution to the puzzle at issue. Augustine writes that
neither then in this way do we say that the Trinity is three persons or substances, one
essence and one God, as if these three subsist out of one material, even if whatever that
material is were spread out in these three; for nothing else is of this essence except that
Trinity.33
The success of any analogy of the divine Trinity will be judged relative to how well it can
articulate for us the nature of divine personhood given the unity of the essence of the godhead. A
central problem with both examples provided so far is that the relevant common material is what
the three statues or humans subsist out of, and so that common material is distinct from those
things which it composes. This is not so in the case of the divine Trinity, of which
we speak of three persons of the same being [...]; we do not speak of three persons out of
32 That is, the best solution will not regard the relationship between personhood and being as one of species to
genus, of individual to species, or of two genera both had by some individual. What I think Augustine's analysis bears out is that, regardless of whether ‘person’ is a kind-term, none of the substantial predicates said singularly of the godhead can be regarded as kind-terms. Rather, they are mass-terms, of the same sort as ‘gold’.
33 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 264): «Nec sic ergo trinitatem dicimus tres personas uel substantias unam essentiam et unum deum tamquam ex una materia tria quaedam subsistant, etiamsi quidquid illud est in his tribus explicatum sit; non enim aliquid aliud eius essentiae est praeter istam trinitatem».
15
the same being, as though what being is were one thing and what person is another, as we
can speak about three statues out of the same gold.34
A proper analogy of the divine Trinity will evidence for us three things which are each wholly
identical to their shared common material; they will not subsist out of that material but rather
will simply be that material. Neither of the analogies Augustine has produced so far evidences
this sort of identity. So our search for an appropriate analogy of the divine Trinity is not
completed with the examples Augustine has so far provided. But that is not to say that Augustine
gives up on his search.35 Rather, in addition to his judgment that both these examples fail as
proper analogies of the divine Trinity, Augustine also provides a diagnosis of why these sorts of
examples were attractive to us as analogies in the first place, and the outline of an intellectual
ascent that will prepare us to continue the search for an analogy that successfully explicates the
nature of the divine Trinity.
To see why both of these examples were attractive to us as analogies of the divine
Trinity, we first need to understand more clearly why they failed. The reason why both examples
failed is that the central objects in each example are corporeal in nature, having spatial dimension
and physical mass. The corporeal nature of the three statues, for example, causes that example to
fail as an analogy of the divine Trinity. First, it fails because each statue could be made of some
34 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 264-5): «Tamen tres personas eiusdem essentiae uel tres personas unam essentiam
dicimus; tres autem personas ex eadem essentia non dicimus quasi aliud ibi sit quod essentia est, aliud quod persona sicut tres statuas ex eodem aura possumus dicere»
35 This point seems to me to be largely missed in the literature. The typical interpretation of the text suggests that the second half of book 7 is aporetic, such that the use of ‘person’ is justified merely by the need for Nicene orthodoxy to say something, with lingering logical and metaphysical worries left unresolved. See, e.g., E. Falque, Saint Augustin ou comment Dieu entre en théologie. Lecture critique des Livres V-VII du “De Trinitate”, ‹‹Nouv. Rev. théol.›› 117 (1995), 97-8; G. Madec, “Inquisitione proficiente”, 63; E. Morgan, The Concept of Person in Augustine's De Trinitate, ‹‹Studia Patristica››, 43 (2006), 201-2.
16
physical material other than gold, and so ‹‹being gold is one thing, being statues another››.36
Second, it fails because the mass of any given statue will be less than the total mass of the gold
itself, since ‹‹there is more gold in three together than in each one of them, and less gold in one
than two››.37 Augustine thinks this is reflected to some degree in his first example as well. Those
three humans do not exhaust that common nature, since any number of additional individuals can
come to share that same physique, sex and spirit. In the divine case, however, each person is
nothing but the divine essence, and each person is wholly the divine essence, such that the divine
essence is exhausted in the three divine persons. Due to their spatial dimension and physical
mass, then, neither three statues nor three humans can be identical with their common material in
the way that each of the divine persons is identical with the divine essence.
But Augustine thinks it is precisely the corporeality of these examples that makes them so
attractive to us in the first place, which evidences a certain intellectual if not moral failing on our
part. That is the failing of the ‹‹beastly human››, a kind of human who ‹‹can only think of masses
and spaces, little or great, with images of bodies flying around in his mind like phantoms››, and
so is unable to grasp the divine Trinity in any way other than through the sort of examples
considered so far.38 It is no mistake, then, that Augustine concludes book 7 by stating that ‹‹until
one is purified of this sort of uncleanness [i.e. the uncleanness of the beastly human], he must
just believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God alone, great››.39 To
understand the divine Trinity, and so solve our puzzle about the nature of divine personhood,
36 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 265).
37 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 265).
38 Aug., trin., VII,6,11 (CCL 50, 265).
39 Aug., trin., VII,6,12 (CCL 50, 265). The mention of God’s greatness is particularly apropos here, given that it is just this characteristic that Augustine will focus on at the beginning of the next book.
17
requires a process of intellectual purification, an ascent to a better way of thinking.
Augustine concludes book 7 with a recapitulation of the state of his inquiry thus far. He
admits that an orthodox trinitarian faith needs a term of the kind that ‘person’ is – that is, a non-
relative term which cannot be predicated singularly of the godhead – writing that ‹‹it is now
agreed to use the plural with names besides relatives, on account of the necessity of
argument››.40 And he suggests that we do not yet have a complete understanding of what that
term expresses, acknowledging that ‹‹if this cannot be grasped by the understanding, let it be
held by faith››.41 However, most central for our purposes is the admonition Augustine gives his
readers as they try to understand what the term ‘person’ expresses. When we use such words as
‘person’ in regards to the divine Trinity,
no masses or spatial intervals are to be thought, one [person] is to be thought from
another not by any distance of dissimilarity or of place no matter how little, nor
[is one person to be thought] a little less than another, in whatever way one can be
less than another.42
Augustine’s central concern with spatial size and physical mass here – all necessary aspects of
corporeal bodies, the reason on account of which Augustine’s previous trinitarian examples
failed as suitable analogies of the divine Trinity – is carried over quite explicitly in book 8.
4. Book 8 and the Beginnings of an Intellectual Ascent
After a brief summary of the philosophical conclusions reached thus far in books 5
40 Aug., trin., VII,6,12 (CCL 50, 267).
41 Aug., trin., VII,6,12 (CCL 50, 267).
42 Aug., trin., VII,6,12 (CCL 50, 267): «si iam placet propter disputandi necessitatem etiam exceptis nominibus relatiuis pluralem numerum admittere ut uno nomine respondeatur cum quaeritur quid tria, et dicere tres substantias siue personas, nullae moles aut interualla cogitentur, nulla distantia quantulaecumque dissimilitudinis aut ubi intellegatur aliud alio uel paulo minus quocumque modo minus esse aliud alio potest»
18
through 7, book 8 immediately resumes the task of solving the puzzle set out in book 7, and it
introduces that task by returning to the issue of mass. Augustine writes that ‹‹we must put some
limits to repetition, and beseech God as devoutly and earnestly as we can to open our
understandings […] so that our minds may be able to perceive the essence or being of truth
without any mass, without any changeableness››.43 What we must find, then, is a way in which to
think of God as a being without mass. For only in thinking of God in this way will we be able to
understand how a trinity of divine persons does not compromise the simple unity of the godhead
which that trinity is.
Augustine’s mention of mass serves to motivate a discussion about the greatness of God.
The central philosophical issue at the beginning of book 8 is the nature of the greatness of God,
and Augustine’s first task is distinguish for his readers’ between greatness and mass. Echoing
book 7, Augustine writes that
in this Trinity two or three persons are not any greater than one of them alone,
which a person accustomed to the flesh does not grasp, since he grasps nothing
except those created truths which he discerns with the senses as he is able. Yet he
is not able to discover that truth by which they are created.44
The human accustomed to the flesh – that is, the beastly human of book 7 – cannot think of
greatness in terms of anything other than mass, and so he cannot but think that two things will
always be greater than one of them alone, since their collective mass is always greater than that
of each one alone.
43 Aug., trin., VIII,1 (CCL 50, 268).
44 Aug., trin., VIII,1,2 (CCL 50, 269): «Dicimus enim non esse in hac trinitate maius aliquid duas aut tres personas quam unam earum, quod non capit consuetudo carnalis non ob aliud nisi quia uera quae creata sunt sentit ut potest, ueritatem autem ipsam qua creata sunt non potest intueri»
19
But Augustine does not simply reiterate in book 8 the diagnosis he offered in book 7. He
also provides a process by which one can rid himself of his flesh-bound intellectual habits.45 The
discussion of God’s greatness actually constitutes the first step in that process; God’s greatness is
introduced precisely as a kind of greatness without mass. Furthermore, Augustine’s use of the
concept of greatness in book 8 is one of four key concepts in that book, the others being truth,
goodness, and love, respectively. Each subsequent concept is introduced in book 8 as identical in
referent – at least in the case of the divine – with the concept previous to it; in fact, God, as
greatness, truth, goodness and love itself, is the measure against which all other instances of
greatness, truth, goodness or love are judged. The introduction of each concept serves as a
further step in the process of intellectual purification.
That book 8 provides for this process of purification seems to me especially explicit in
the transition from the concept of greatness to the concept of truth. For the introduction of the
concept of truth is supposed to aid the reader in distinguishing the concept of greatness from the
concept of mass. In the case of a body, that body’s greatness is its mass, and the mass of that
thing is distinct from the truth of that thing - that is, what that thing is. But for an incorporeal and
unchangeable thing, that thing’s truth will be identical to its greatness. Furthermore, ‹‹where
greatness is simply truth itself, anything that has more greatness will have more truth››.46 In the
case of the persons of the divine Trinity, however, the truth of that Trinity is nothing other than
the truth of each of the persons of that Trinity, since ‹‹the Father and the Son together do not
have being more truly than the Father alone or the Son alone››.47 Augustine draws from this a
45 On De Trinitate, and especially its latter half, as an exercitatio animi, see M. Claes, Exercitatio Animi in
Augusine's De Trinitate, ‹‹Studia Patristica››, 43 (2006), 48.
46 Aug., trin., VIII,1,2 (CCL 50, 269).
47 Aug., trin., VIII,1,2 (CCL 50, 269).
20
conclusion about the greatness of the divine Trinity and the persons in it. ‹‹So both [i.e. the
Father and the Son] together are not something greater than each one of them singularly››.48
Since, in the case of the divine, greatness just is truth, the greatness of the Father and the Son
together is nothing other than the greatness of each one of them alone. Consequently, the
greatness of each of the divine persons must be a greatness quite different from that of bodily
things, whose greatness is nothing other than their mass. For, unlike with bodily things, the
Father and Son together will be not greater than each by himself.
By introducing the concept of truth, then, Augustine provides an explanation of divine
greatness by which his readers can understand how the notion of greatness differs from the
notion of mass, and so take an initial step in understanding the nature of divine personhood. It is
no mistake that Augustine sees the introduction of the notion of truth, at least initially, as
liberating. ‹‹Come, see if you can, O soul weighed down with the body that decays and burdened
with many and variable earthly thoughts, come see it if you can – God is truth››.49
Yet this is only an early step in the process of purification. The introduction of truth
proves insufficient because, for a bodily thing, that thing’s truth is not equivalent to its greatness.
‹‹With bodily things it can happen that this gold is as true as that, and yet this [gold] is greater
than that, because in this case to be great is not the same as to be true and it is one thing for it to
be gold, another to be great››.50 Two pieces of gold are both equally true gold, but one piece may
be greater than the other, because it has more mass than the other. As a consequence, if we are
48 Aug., trin., VIII,1,2 (CCL 50, 269).
49 Aug., trin., VIII,2,3 (CCL 50, 271).
50 Aug., trin., VIII,2,3 (CCL 50, 271). That Augustine’s example here is gold seems to clearly allude back to the example of the three statues at the end of book 7, in which all three are composed out of gold yet are able to be of varying greatnesses.
21
accustomed to thinking only in terms of bodies and so fail to see that greatness need not be
understood in terms of mass, it seems that we are equally prone to fail to understand that
greatness can be equivalent to truth. Augustine himself recognizes the insufficiency of this step
in the process of purification, writing
do not ask what truth is; for immediately a fog of corporeal images and a cloud of
phantasmata hinders you and disturbs the serenity which delighted you in that
first moment when I said to you “truth.” Come, remain if you can in that first
moment in which so to speak you caught a flash in the corner of your eye when
‘truth’ was said; but you cannot. You fall back into those familiar and earthly
things.51
Thus the introduction of the concept of truth by itself is unable to free us completely from our
flesh-bound habit of thought. It provides only a moment where we catch a sideways glance of
truth itself before we fall back once again into thinking of things in terms of masses and spaces.52
However, the introduction of truth is still a necessary step in that process of purification,
for three reasons. First, the concept of truth is at least the means by which the concept of
goodness can be introduced, and that concept explicitly provides the normative and volitional
grounds for the introduction of the concept of love. It is on account of the concept of love that we
arrive at the first mental trinity of lover, love, and that which is loved. Second, though we see
truth itself only for a moment, we do see truth itself, and so we have an experience of thinking of
51 Aug., trin., VIII,2,3 (CCL 50, 271): «Noli quaerere quid sit ueritas; statim enim se opponent caligines imaginum
corporalium et nubila phantasmatum et perturbabunt serenitatern quae primo ictu diluxit tibi cum dicerem, ueritas. Ecce in ipso primo ictu qua uelut coruscatione perstringeris cum dicitur ueritas mane si potes; sed non potes. Relaberis in ista solita atque terrena»
52 An experience of this sort, and Augustine’s subsequent descent back into more corporeal ways of thinking, plays a crucial role in the Confessiones as well. See Aug., conf., VII,17,23.
22
something incorporeal.53 As the ending of book 7 makes clear, such an experience is precisely
what we need if we are going to come to understand the nature of divine personhood. Finally,
truth itself more than any other is identified in book 8 as the object of true love, since truth itself
is the standard against which all other things are measured. A human who is believed to be just,
for example, is loved ‹‹according to that form, truth, which the one who is loving perceives and
understands in himself; but this form, truth, is not loved according to a standard derived from
another source››.54 So truth provides for us the means to understand that very truth, which is the
proper object of our love. It provides for the exercise of a cognitive ability of ours and so starts a
process through which we can come to have (as best we can in this life, at least) a proper vision
and love of that very truth, which is nothing other than three divine persons joined in a simple
unity of being.
We find, then, an inquiry into a particular puzzle about the nature of divine personhood
which is inaugurated in book 7 and continues into book 8. The purpose of that inquiry is to
provide an account of the nature of divine personhood, an account coherent with the absolute
simplicity of God. While book 7 sets out that puzzle, and begins an inquiry into its solution, our
attempts are ultimately hindered by a corporeal way of thinking. Book 8 begins to free us from
that way of thinking, and thus prepares us for the trinities that are to follow, trinities of an
incorporeal mind which, as analogies of the divine Trinity, elucidate for us a being who is at
once three persons and one simple essence.
53 In both De Libero Arbitrio and Confessiones, it is the recognition of truth itself which results in the ability to think
of incorporeal things. This ability is precisely what we need in our present inquiry if we are to come to have an understanding of divine personhood; lib. arb., II,xi,30,122-4; II,xii,34,133-4. See also Aug., conf., VII,10,16.
54 Aug., trin., VIII,6,9 (CCL 50, 283).
23
5. Lessons about the Investigation into the Human Mind
Once we recognize that book 8 continues a line of inquiry into a puzzle about divine
personhood begun in book 7, I think we can draw from that continuity important lessons about
the larger investigation into mind that begins near the start of book 9 and continues to the end of
the work. One lesson concerns the immediate motivation for that project. What motivates that
investigation is a desire to solve a puzzle about the nature of divine personhood – how each
divine person has his own sort of being without any jeopardy to the simple being of the godhead
itself. This is evidenced by the fact that the philosophical considerations of book 8 do not
conclude with a clear insight into the metaphysics of divine personhood but rather end with an
investigation into love. That investigation produces in book 9 what will be the first in a long
series of mental trinities. It is only when we are presented with a thorough analysis of the mind’s
memory, love and knowledge of itself in book 14 that we can regard that argument as in any way
complete.
Various remarks in book 9 lend support to the claim that Augustine’s thoughts on the
nature of mind are motivated by such a desire. Perhaps the most fundamental criterion of an
adequate analogy of the divine Trinity that develops clearly from Augustine’s investigation into
divine personhood in book 7 is that each member in an analogy of the divine Trinity must be
something substantial, and yet those members collectively must have one essence or substance.
While failing in other respects, the putative analogies of the divine Trinity offered in book 7 met
that criterion, and it is precisely because they met it that they appeared to be analogies of the
divine Trinity in the first place. Throughout book 9, Augustine emphasizes that the mental
trinities he develops also meet that criterion.
At the beginning of book 9, when investigating whether we can understand the divine
24
Trinity by looking at the mind’s love of itself, Augustine writes that the mind’s love of itself is
an effective analogy of the divine Trinity in at least this respect: the mind and its love are each
mind, each spirit, and yet they are together one mind and one spirit. ‹‹Insofar as they are spoken
of substantially they are each spirit and they are both together one spirit, they are each mind and
both together one mind››.55 Later in book 9, while admitting that the mind’s knowledge is called
knowledge with reference to another, and so too the mind’s love, Augustine stresses that all three
– the mind, its love, and its knowledge – are each something substantial. ‹‹Love and knowledge
are not in the mind as in a subject, but they too exist substantially, just as mind [exists]; and even
if they are posited relative to each other, still each is its own substance››.56 And yet the mind, its
love and its knowledge are together only one being, and each is equal to that being. «Yet I cannot
see how those three are not of the same being, since the mind is itself loving itself and itself
knowing itself».57 These mental examples are plausible analogies of the divine Trinity precisely
because they meet the criterion set out in book 7 and so explicate for us (to varying degrees of
success) how the divine Trinity can be three persons and yet one simple being. And so it seems
that Augustine’s investigation of mind is motivated by the same concerns which motivate the
analogies developed in book 7.
Given that Augustine’s considerations about the human mind are motivated in this way,
there seems to me to be a second lesson to draw. That lesson is that this investigation of the
human mind constitutes an advance in our search for a solution to the puzzle introduced in book
7, and in particular an advance over the corporeal way of thinking that encouraged examples of
55 Aug., trin., IX,2,2 (CCL 50, 295).
56 Aug., trin., IX,4,5 (CCL 50, 298).
57 Aug., trin., IX,4,7 (CCL 50, 299).
25
the sort developed at the end of that book. Just as each subsequent mental trinity developed in
books 9 and 10, and likewise each subsequent mental trinity developed in books 11 through 14,
is to be regarded as an improvement on those that preceded it, so too the turn inward to the
structures of the incorporeal human mind constitutes an improvement over the kind of search for
an analogy of the divine Trinity conducted in book 7. Rather than merely a different sort of
investigation of the divine Trinity than we find in earlier books, the investigation of the mind
constitutes a better sort of inquiry, because it is only through an investigation of the structures of
an incorporeal substance – one's own mind – that we are able to truly understand how there can
be three divine persons, each substantially his own, without jeopardizing divine simplicity.
Augustine himself invites us to view this turn towards the structures of the mind as an
advance in our inquiry in one particular passage. In book 9, Augustine notes that the trinity of the
mind, its love of itself and its knowledge of itself differs in a crucially important way from a
trinity of three golden rings, linked one to the others. Unlike three linked golden rings, the mind,
its love of itself and its knowledge of itself do not subsist out of some common material but
rather are each simply that material. This encourages a comparison to the end book 7 in two
ways. First, the example of the three golden rings with which Augustine contrasts this mental
trinity, while not the same example as any we find in book 7, is similar in all relevant respects. In
particular, it bears a striking resemblance to Augustine’s example of three statues made out of
gold.58 So it seems there is a clear allusion to the sorts of trinities developed near the start of our
inquiry. Second, Augustine employs this example to illustrate again the difference between a
trinity the members of which subsist out of some common material and a trinity the members of
which are each identical to that common material. Just like the examples Augustine developed at
58 In fact, Augustine mentions golden rings in his criticism of this example. See Aug., trin., VII,6,11.
26
the end of book 7, the example of three golden rings linked together cannot illustrate for us the
divine Trinity because those three rings only subsist out of gold, and so none are equal to that
gold. Augustine makes this point by writing that ‹‹if they are mixed up together and each strewn
throughout the whole mass, then that trinity will collapse and simply will not be››.59 Since each
ring is not identical with the common material that composes the trinity of which it is a member,
any attempt to make each of those rings identical to that gold destroys the individual being of
each ring. Unlike at the end of book 7, however, Augustine has a trinitarian example of a
different sort with which to contrast that failed analogy. For the mind, its love of itself and its
knowledge of itself do not each subsist of their shared common material, but rather they are
simply that material, with the result that the whole substance of mind is found in each. While not
itself the final mental trinity Augustine will develop, that trinity is representative of the
advantage the investigation of the mind as a whole and the sorts of trinities developed out of that
investigation have over trinities of the sort developed at the end of book 7.60 For each member is
wholly identical with mind, and so wholly within the other two, without any threat to the
individual being of each of those three.
Augustine’s investigation of the human mind is therefore motivated by a puzzle about
divine personhood set out in book 7, and furthermore that investigation serves as an advance in
our inquiry into a solution to it. Like the examples developed at the end of book 7, the mental
trinities developed in books 9 and following are meant to illustrate for us the nature of the divine
59 Aug., trin., IX,4,7 (CCL 50, 300).
60 Note supra that in the example of the mind’s loving itself which Augustine develops at the beginning of book 9, not only are each of the members of that example something substantial, but each is composed of mind and is not composed out of mind. So we can generalize our conclusions here to the (putative) trinity of the mind’s loving itself as well. The same appears to be true about the final mental trinity which Augustine develops in book 10. The mind’s memory of itself, love of itself and understanding of itself are each a substance (though they are called memory, love or understanding relatively), yet all three are not composed out of mind but rather are simply mind, which is a single essence.
27
Trinity, and thus to explain how it is that a multiplicity of divine persons is compatible with the
simplicity of the divine essence. And unlike the examples developed at the end of book 7, we
find in those mental trinities three substantially unique things which are yet each identical to the
essence common to them all. As such, those mental trinities can illustrate for us (to the extent
possible in this life, at least) how it is that three substantially unique divine persons are each
identical to that whole divine Trinity, a trinity which is nothing other than one simple essence.
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