Augustine: Love and the Trinity

I am reading a book named, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Rober Louis Wilken.  In the following quote, the author is summarizing how Augustine pursued knowledge of the Triune God through the love of God.

What Augustine is seeking is not a theological concept or an explanation as such, but the living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the "Trinity that is God, the true and supreme and only God."  If one asks, What does it mean to find the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? the answer is not so obvious.  Finding means more than simply getting things straight or discovering the most appropriate analogy in human experience for the Triune God.  There can be no finding without a change in the seeker.  Our minds, he says, must be purified, and we must be made fit and capable of receiving what is sought.  We can cleave to God and see the Holy Trinity only when we burn with love." (p. 108)

Hosea teaches that God wants us to pursue knowing Him.  The knowledge of God is everywhere and He desires us to pursue a loving, intimate relationship with Him through obedience to His Word.

Hosea 6:3-6
Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;
   his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
   as the spring rains that water the earth.”

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
   What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
   like the dew that goes early away.
Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
   I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
   and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
   the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

John 14 is one of the main teaching passages about the doctrine of the trinity.  The following passage links loving God to obeying God's commandments to a growing knowledge of God.

John 14:20-24
In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.  And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”  Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.