Although not as well known as some of his other works, some scholars have seen it as his masterpiece, of more doctrinal importance even than Confessions or The City of God.
But a letter of 412[3] states that friends were at that time asking to complete and publish it, and the letter to Aurelius, which was sent with the treatise itself when actually completed, states that a portion of it, while still unrevised and incomplete, was in fact surreptitiously made public.
The letter to Bishop Aurelius also states that the work was many years in progress and was begun in Saint Augustine's early manhood.
[4] It is also the title of works written by at least two other scholars of the early church: Hilary of Poitiers (the 'Hammer of the Arians') and Richard of St. Victor.
[5][6] The anecdote means the impossibility for the finite human mind to know deeply the faith mystery of the Holy Trinity.