The Gift of Love: The Holy Spirit in Augustine's De Trinitate

This article originated as a theology paper written for the purpose of my studies with Union Theological College in Spring 2025.

Although the Council of Constantinople largely resolved the Arian controversy in AD 381, it raised questions that continued to be debated into the fifth century.[1] This included those asked by the Pneumatomachi about the Holy Spirit. For this reason, when outlining his doctrine of the Trinity in De Trinitate, Augustine not only sought to defend his views on the Son, but to also clarify their implications for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

The Arians argued that differences between the Father and the Son must be either substantial or accidental.[2]However, Augustine rejected this alleged ‘substance/accident dichotomy.’[3] He reasoned that predicating a substantial difference denies divine simplicity, while adopting an accidental difference undermines divine aseity. [4] As a result, Augustine proposed a third way, arguing differences between the Father and Son must be predicated by way of relationship.[5]

Augustine points out that such relationships are immediately apparent from the names of the Father and Son, which speak of paternity and filiation respectively. Conversely, he admits such relations are not apparent from the more general name of ‘Holy Spirit’.[6] Instead, this paper argues that he integrates the Holy Spirit into his relational account of the Trinity by emphasising the names of ‘Gift’ and ‘Love’. It concludes by showing that in embracing these two names, Augustine reveals the relational reality that is often overlooked in the name of ‘Holy Spirit’.

The Gift of God

By calling the Holy Spirit Gift, Augustine immediately resolves his problem, for that conveys the relationship between a giver and the one to whom it is given.[7] Nevertheless, Luigi Gioia rightly cautions us from assuming that this name is a novelty that merely arises from polemical necessity.[8] For identifying the Holy Spirit as the ‘mutual gift’ between the Father and Son has historical precedent, appearing in the work of Hilary of Poitiers.[9] Further, and far more importantly, Augustine is able to build strong biblical support for the use of this name.

Augustine points out that Acts repeatedly calls the Holy Spirit both a gift (Acts 2:37; 10:45; 11:17) and the gift of God (Acts 8:20).[10] This aligns with how John speaks of the Holy Spirit as well, as in thematically interwoven passages he describes him as ‘the gift of God’ (John 4:10) and the one who is ‘given’ (John 7:37). Finally, this is confirmed by Paul, who carefully implies that the Holy Spirit is the gift given after Christ’s ascension (Eph. 4:7).[11]

In developing this line of reasoning, Augustine carefully nuances its theological implications. While he admits that the Holy Spirit is donated in time, Augustine understands him to be ‘everlastingly gift’.[12] This avoids drawing any conclusion that his identity is determined by a temporal relation.[13] Augustine also argues that the Gift is given by both the Father and the Son. This is because the Holy Spirit is said to both proceed ‘from’ and be ‘of’ the Father (Matt. 10:20; John 15:26), as well as being described as ‘of’ the Son (Rom. 8:9; Gal. 4:6).[14]

The Love of God

While highlighting the name of Gift resolves Augustine’s problem, he believes we can delve deeper into this relational reality by also uncovering the name of Love. However, unlike that of Gift, he admits that this name cannot be established by simply quoting Scripture. The Bible never says that ‘the Holy Spirit is love.’[15] However, Augustine points out that it does say ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8, 16). He argues this statement must be carefully investigated to determine whether it refers to the Trinity as a whole, or distinctively to just one person.[16]

Augustine accepts that it is possible for both the Trinity and a person to share the same name. For example, he notes that this is the case with the name of Wisdom, which he understands to be given both to the whole Trinity and distinctively to the Son as the Word (1 Cor. 1:24).[17] In a similar way, Augustine understands the name of Love to apply to both the Father and Son ‘in a general sense’, while also being a distinctive name of the Holy Spirit.[18]

Augustine arrives at this understanding through a careful consideration of 1 John 4:7–13. His reasoning revolves around two key phrases: ‘love is of God’ (1 John 4:7) and ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8).[19] He argues that only the Son and the Holy Spirit could be the love that is ‘of God’, given they alone are both ‘God of God’ due to generation and spiration respectively.[20] However, of these two, Augustine believes it is the Holy Spirit that is being referenced. This is because John later explains that love abides in us due to the gift of the Holy Spirit (1 John 4:13). Augustine also draws support from 1 John 4:16, which ‘ascribes mutual indwelling identically to love and to the Holy Spirit, thus implying that love is indeed the property of the Holy Spirit.’[21]

Augustine makes similar arguments in his homilies on 1 John 4:7–13.[22] However, his view is not based on this single text alone. He also draws support from the unifying effect of love in Acts 4:32, arguing that the Holy Spirit eternally originates ‘as the fruit or seal of the love of the Father and the Son for one another.’[23] He likewise regularly refers to Romans 5:5, where it is ‘the Holy Spirit proceeding from God who fires man to the love of God and neighbor when he has been given to him.’[24] Finally, Augustine deduces it from Paul’s elevation of love in 1 Corinthians  13:1–3. If love is the greatest possible gift, and there is no greater gift than the Holy Spirit, then he believes that this confirms him as ‘the gift of God who is love.’[25]

Revealing a Relational Reality

Embracing the names of Gift and Love undoubtedly solves Augustine’s relational riddle. And yet, he does not allow these names to overshadow that of Holy Spirit. This is crucial, as it is the most common name, and repeatedly appears in key passages (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14). As Geerhardus Vos surmised, ‘If the Third Person is called the Holy Spirit specifically, there must be a specific reason.’[26] Given the names of Father and Son have relational significance, we might expect there to be a similar, even if often unseen, significance to that of Holy Spirit.

Gregg Allison points out that by approaching Scripture with this expectation, Augustine finds it to be the case.[27]As highlighted above, the name Holy Spirit does not apparently disclose a relational difference with the other persons. Afterall, the Father and Son are both individually called holy and spirit. Therefore, if the name simply signifies that the Holy Spirit has ‘a holy nature’ or ‘a spiritual substance’, then it does not distinguish him.[28] However, rather than this being a problem, Augustine argues that it is this very commonality that speaks to the relations predicated between the Holy Spirit and the Father and Son. For because the Gift ‘is common to them both, he is called distinctively what they are called in common.’[29] Similarly, as Love, ‘to signify the communion of them both’ he is given ‘a name which applies to them both.’[30]

Conclusion

While a unique relationship with the Father and Son ‘is not apparent’ in the name Holy Spirit, Augustine shows that it can still be deduced from it. For the Holy Spirit is also Gift and Love. Further, being the gift of both Father and Son, as well as the bond of love between them, the very commonness of his name speaks to the communion that he shares with them both.

Augustine’s biblical and theological arguments have not received universal acceptance. For example, some have questioned his exegesis of 1 John 4 and queried the impersonal nature of these names.[31]Nevertheless, his view has been extremely formative, especially as amplified through the later work of Aquinas.[32]It also led to Augustine’s ‘most influential’ model of the Trinity, that of ‘lover’, ‘beloved’, and ‘love’.[33]In this way, the name of Love not only solves Augustine’s relational riddle, but leads him into the theological heart of hisDe Trinitate.[34]

[1] A.C. Thiselton, The Holy Spirit: In Biblical Teaching, through the Centuries, and Today (London, 2013), 202.

[2] Christopher R. J. Holmes, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, 2015), 60–1.

[3] Holmes, The Holy Spirit, 69.

[4] Holmes, The Holy Spirit, 63.

[5] Augustine, De Trinitate, 238.

[6] Ibid., 242.

[7] Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church (Grand Rapids, 2016), 65.

[8] Luigi Gioia, Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford, 2008), 137.

[9] A. Edward Siecienski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford, 2010), 53.

[10] Augustine, De Trinitate, 547–8.

[11] Ibid., 544–5.

[12] Ibid., 246.

[13] Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 62.

[14] Siecienski, The Filioque, 59.

[15] Augustine, De Trinitate, 539.

[16] Ibid., 540.

[17] Ibid., 541.

[18] Ibid., 542.

[19] Gregg R. Allison and Andreas J. Köstenberger, The Holy Spirit (Nashville, 2020), 266.

[20] Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 56

[21] Gioia, Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, 136.

[22] Augustine, Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John, 503.

[23] Bruce D. Marshall, ‘The Deep Things in God: Trinitarian Pneumatology’, in G. Emery and M. Levering (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity (Oxford, 2011), 404.

[24] Augustine, De Trinitate, 543; Augustine, Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, 97, 223.

[25] Augustine, De Trinitate, 543, 549.

[26] Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Theology, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Bellingham, 2020), 77.

[27] Allison and Köstenberger, The Holy Spirit, 265.

[28] John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (Arkansas, 2007), 159.

[29] Augustine, De Trinitate, 549.

[30] Augustine, De Trinitate, 242.

[31] Allison and Köstenberger, The Holy Spirit, 269; G. A. Cole, He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Wheaton: 2007), 75.

[32] Marshall, ‘The Deep Things in God’, 406.

[33] Siecienski, The Filioque, 60.

[34] Thiselton, The Holy Spirit, 203.