Vestigia trinitatis

Keith Johnson gave a solid exposition of Augustine’s views on the vestigia trinitatis in an ETS session this morning. He argued that Augustine is not using the vestigia to prove the Trinity or as a “second root” (Barth) in addition to the economic revelation of the Trinity. In fact, Augustine stays within the economy of redemption throughout the discussion of the vestigia, tracing the damage of the image of God, its restoration and future perfection through Books 12-14 of de Trinitate. He also suggested that the role of the vestigia is limited by the Creator-creature distinction (which manifests itself in patristic thought as an emphasis on the simplicity of God), which implies dissimilitude as well as similitude between God and His image, and Augustine highlights the dim reflection of the Trinity in the image as part of a quest to know God, not as a piece of detached “natural Trinitarian theology.” Johnson also had some critical comments about the way Trinitarian vestiges are employed in discussions of world religions by Pannikar and others.

One question: Johnson repeated the common formula that every similarity of God is exceeded by a much greater dissimilarity. It struck me that I’m not sure what that means. How do we measure “dissimilarity”? And even if the formula is clear, I’m not sure it’s true. If you made a list of all the likenesses and a list of all the unlikenesses, would the latter list be longer?