What would you say in reply to God if he told you himself, that he were three distinct identities and yet only one entity? Why is Trinitarianism important? The alternative, which is best termed “Theistic Monism” (TM) is problematic for several reasons. A TM-adherent friend once asked me “But why should it be so complicated? God is great god is one. There is none like him. And he created everything. I find that beautiful. In one sentence I know who my creator is.” I answered: “Rather you might want to ask “Why should it not be complicated?” The Trinity is the simplest answer to the complex question of the Nature of God.

Describing the Tri-Personality of God

The late Christian theologian Fr. Karl Rahner stated:

“…how simple Christianity is. It is the determination to surrender to God’s incomprehensibility in love. It is the fear that one does not do this, but instead draws a line at the comprehensible and so sins…” (CoFp.81).

Christianity presents God being incomprehensible, and yet somehow accessible in Jesus, thus effectively accomplishing what should be impossible. This is what makes it a real religion, because incomprehensible as it  might be, it is at least doctrinally, or in its own self-understanding, a relationship with God.

Holy Trinity in the Analogy of Mind

This is the analogy: Collect together all of your thoughts, every single thing you know, every memory, hope and longing, every theory and concept you might possess. What you then behold would be the SELF or the “I”. And yet there remain two notions in this, the distinction between that which is thinking and that which it is thinking about, or that which is considering and that which is being considered. In a sense we have a “self” is regarding “itself”. Further the act of thinking has not brought about a disastrous split in ourselves caused us to fall apart into a disunity, rather the two notions of thinker and thought are a perfect unity. Conceiving one’s “word” does not split the mind, rather, it is the natural activity of the mind (unless one’s thoughts are conflicting!) (Kierkegaard’s definition is well-known: “the self is that which relates the self to itself”) We are conscious of such a duality in times of self-reflection when the self is addressed directly: “What must I do!” etc. Through this analogy we can understand how the Father which “begets” the Son, as you also “conceive” yourself, or “conceptualize”. In doing so the mind is not divided, so also there is no division in God. The ancient text of Genesis states that man is made “in the image and likeness of God” (1:26). It is our assertion that in all of creation, it is the humble human intellect that reflects, even if only in analogy, the Divine Being itself and the Divine Life.

St. John has written: “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26)

This is the description of the begetting of the Son in the Gospels- both Father and Son have Life “in themselves” (echei zoen en heauto), and yet the Father is really Father to the Son as “granting” him that Life (edoken zoen). The Son is given “to have life in himself” (zoen, echein en heauto), “Just as the Father” has life in himself, so also does the Son (hosper gar…houtos kai). The import of these words cannot be played down, for the Son has Life, which is the very Quality of God, “just as” the Father does. There should be no mistaking that to have life “in oneself” can only be stated of God, so this is a verse that affirms the divinity of both Father and Son, and the begotten-ness of the one from the other. No one and nothing else is ever spoken of in this manner in any religious literature. The use of “granted” here should not bother us, and can be taken as a euphemistic/ poetic usage.

Thoughts are words, but God’s thoughts are not separate words, sequentially constructed into sentences and propositions, but rather one Eternal Word which perfectly conveys all Wisdom and Grace. The Word…the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Thus the Persons of God do not “speak” to one another in the manner of human speech in which where communications between individuals result in the exchange of information (which is the purpose of human speech). The Second Person of God “is” the Speech of God, that speech which is so Perfect as to be a Person constituting “all grace and wisdom”, and in so being, completely Beloved in the Holy Spirit. Further we must also say that with regards to this knowledge, God is perfect, God knows himself perfectly. God is perfectly Omniscient of Himself, the infinite Omnipotent.

Thus this reasoning yields both omniscience and omnipotence, which is very expedient indeed! There is nothing of the Father that is not the Son and there is nothing of the Son that is not the Father. As St Thomas says, “only the distinction of origin remains”. As Jesus says (Jn.17:10) “all I have is yours”, and (1Cor.3:23) “Christ is of God”. 

St Thomas describes how if one’s word is contemplated completely then the union too rather than being divided, is a perfect union:

“…indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds, the more closely it is one with the source whence it proceeds. For it is clear that the more a thing is understood, the more closely is the intellectual conception joined and united to the intelligent agent; since the intellect by the very act of understanding is made one with the object understood. Thus, as the divine intelligence is the very supreme perfection of God, the divine Word is of necessity perfectly one with the source whence He proceeds, without any kind of diversity.” [STI, Q27. Art.1 ad2].

God speaks a perfect Word, and that Word, as St. Paul says, is the perfect expression of the Being of God (Heb. 1:3) “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” -what is an exact representation of God is either a second God, or God himself, else how might there be such an “exact representation” of that which can never be represented, or reproduced? Jesus says (Jn.10:15) “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father…”, “…Your name that you have given me” (John 17:11) “the glory that you have given me” (John 17:22) “the words you gave me I have given to them” (John 17:7) “…everything that I have heard from the Father” (John 15:16) “you have sent me into the world…you have sent me” (John 17:18,20) And contemplating his word God loves his word, and the Love of God for his Word is the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).

St. Aquinas states (SCG Bk. 4 Ch.11:5-8) that unlike humans, God is not dependent for his understanding on anything that is outside him and so both the “intellect” and the “word” which is his understanding of himself, lie within him. He further asserts that the word proceeds “naturally” from God:

“Consideration must, furthermore, be given to this: Since in any nature the procession of the son from the father is natural, from the fact that the Word of God is called the Son of God He must proceed naturally from the Father. This is in agreement with the things said above, as one can perceive from what takes place in our intellect. For our intellect knows some things naturally; thus the first principles of the intelligibles, whose intelligible conceptions—called interior words—naturally exist in the intellect and proceed from it. There are also certain intelligibles which our intellect does not know naturally; rather, it arrives at the knowledge of these by reasoning. The conceptions of these last do not exist in our intellect naturally, but are sought after by study. Manifestly, however, God understands Himself naturally just as He is naturally, for His act of understanding is His being (as was proved in Book I). Therefore, the Word of God understanding Himself naturally proceeds from Him….In this way the falsity of what the Arians (who held that Jesus is created being) maintained is clear, that the Father generated the Son by His will. For things which are by will are not natural things.

We Quote from JND Kelly’s description of Augustine’s writings:

“…according to Augustine, there are ‘vestiges’ of the Trinity everywhere, for in so far as creatures exist at all they exist by participating in the ideas of God; hence everything must reflect, however faintly, the Trinity which created it. For Its veritable image, however, a man should look primarily into himself, for Scripture represents God as saying, ‘Let us [i.e. the Three] make man in our image and our likeness’. Even the outer man, i.e. man considered in his sensible nature, offers ‘a kind of resemblance to the Trinity’ (quandam trinitatis effigiem). The process of perception, for example, yields three distinct elements which are at the same time closely united, and of which the first in a sense begets the second while the third binds the other two together, viz. the external object (res quam videmus), the mind’s sensible representation of it (visio), and the intention or act of focussing the mind (intentio; voluntas; intentio voluntatis). Again, when the external object is removed, we have a second trinity, much superior because located entirely within the mind and therefore ‘of one and the same substance ‘, viz. the memory impression (memoria), the internal memory image (visio interna), and the intention or setting of the will.

For the actual image, however, of the Triune Godhead we should look to the inner man, or soul, and in the inner man to his rational nature, or mens, which is the loftiest and most God-like part of him. It has often been assumed that Augustine’s principal Trinitarian analogy in the De trinitate is that disclosed by his analysis of the idea of love (his starting-point is the Johannine dictum that God is love) into the lover (amans), the object loved (quod amatur), and the love (amor) which unites, or strives to unite, them.

(…) he considers his all-important analogy, based on the inner man, viz. the mind’s activity as directed upon itself or, better still, upon God. This analogy fascinated him all his life, so that in such an early work as the Confessions (397-8) we find him pondering the triad of being, knowing and willing (esse, nosse, velle). In the De trinitate he elaborates it at length in three successive stages, the resulting trinities being (each is a trinity here- my addition): (a) the mind, its knowledge of itself, and its love of itself; (b) memory or, more properly, the mind’s latent knowledge of itself; understanding, i.e. its apprehension of itself in the light of the eternal reasons; and the will, or love of itself, by which this process of knowledge is set in motion; and (c) the mind as remembering, knowing and loving God Himself. Each of these, in different degrees, reveals three real dements which, according to Augustine’s metaphysic of personality, are coordinate and therefore equal, and at the same time essentially one; each of them throws light on the mutual radiations of the divine Persons. It is the last of the three analogies, however, which Augustine deems most satisfactory. The three factors disclosed in the second ‘are not three lives but one life, not three minds but one mind, and consequently are not three substances but one substance’; but he reasons that it is only when the mind has focussed itself with all its powers of remembering, understanding and loving on its Creator, that the image it bears of Him, corrupted as it is by sin, can be fully restored.” (Kelly)

St. Augustine says: “I am talking about these three things: being, knowing, and willing. For I am and I know and I will. In that I know and will, I am. And I know myself to be and to will. And I will to be and to know. Let him who can, see in these three things how inseparable a life is: one life, one mind, and one essence, how there is, finally, an inseparable distinction, and yet a distinction. Surely this is obvious to each one himself” (Confessions 13.11.12)

“I am talking about these three things: being, knowing, and willing. For I am and I know and I will. In that I know and will, I am. And I know myself to be and to will. And I will to be and to know. Let him who can, see in these three things how inseparable a life is: one life, one mind, and one essence, how there is, finally, an inseparable distinction, and yet a distinction. Surely this is obvious to each one himself” (DT 8.10.14)

“the mind itself, its love [of itself ] and its knowledge [of itself ] are a kind of trinity; these three are one, and when they are perfect they are equal” (DT 9.4.4). Augustine settles on the triad of memory, understanding, will towards the end of his discourse, after recounting the others.

God as a Perfect Loving Act

God is able to regard the object of his Love. Thought is nothing without content nor is love anything without an object. That which is Given is distinct from the Love for it, as is the Giver distinct himself- there is no admixture of terms which would risk a purely metaphorical rendering. The Son in being perfectly begotten of the Father, receives “all things” (παρεδόθη -“delivered/ handed over to me”- Lk.10:22, Mt.11:27), and is therefore the “whole Substance” of him. All the substance of the Father is love for the Son, the same love that is returned to the Father by the Son, and thus the Holy Spirit too is “all” of God in this. Thus the very Activity of the Monotheistic Deity yields Tri-Personality. If we can accept that any act, to be an act requires three distinctions: that which acts, that which it acts upon and the purpose of the act itself, then we see all these in the Trinitarian act. In simply stating the phrase: “God Loves Himself” in doing so we describe all the Persons of God “God (Father), “Loves” (Holy Spirit) himself (Son)”. God is described by what he Really Does, which is the acting in love, rather than a nondescript existence. The Father has given “all that is his” to the Son in a perfect act self-giving, in the Love of the Holy Spirit, in something like a primordial sacrifice. The “triangulation” of the three Persons enables content rather than self-referentiality. Love is the reason that the Father gives “all he has” to the Son, in Begetting the Word. Thus “…My beloved Son” (Mt.3:17) is an eternal statement of the Holy Trinity, revealed to us at the Baptism of Jesus, the relationship of the Father who regards his Son with the Love of the Holy Spirit as a dove that gently alights upon him.

Love as a Perfect Emotion: The reader might be aware of the generally accepted transcendental terms which are taken as theologically equivalent and each of which might be used for God- love, truth, being, goodness, unity, and some would also add to the list “beauty”. The best description of God we humans can attempt is: emotionally as “Love”, existentially as “Being”, intellectually as “Truth”, aesthetically as “Beauty”, numerically as “Unity”, and morally as “goodness”. This is why we are given such terms in the Bible (1Jn.4:8,16; Ex.3:14; Dt.6:4; Jn.4:16). The Father lovingly speaks, and loves the Word he has spoken. Thus everything in God is Love. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all the same Love, different only in relation.

Why do we hone in on love, of all the emotions? By way explanation, consider that all emotions, with the sole exception of love, might actually be considered weaknesses. One might say that they are all expressions of one’s insecurity: Anger can be seen an aggressive expression of insecurity, fear as submissive, jealousy as hateful, sadness is insecurity itself, and so on. Love alone triumphs over it. In human beings, one might consider the possibility of a chemical and scientific basis of the formation of loving bonds, produced by chemical reactions in the body involving hormones like Oxytocin, Dopamine and Serotonin in particular. Human love can reduce and it can increase. When a woman has a period, (so I’ve heard!) she gets angry and irritable. Thus we can show and with many more examples, that human emotions are always changing. What’s more, all the emotions are involved in a kind of zero-sum game, so that the more negative emotions that one has, the less positive. In fact emotions can be defined by the lack of their contraries: Sadness is the lack of joy, anger is the lack of control and peace, hatred is the absence of love. God, on the other hand is like none of these, he is always pure Joy. Those who reject God go to hell. He does not need to get angry with them in order that this might occur. Their punishment is already sealed in their rejection. God does not suffer from his rejection by others, like an insecure teen.

I was contending with a unitarian (NTM) saying that in his model God could not possibly love nor have knowledge. His reply was to ask why God needed to be love itself, and indeed why did God need to love at all. Did God need to be a plant in order to create one? God was simply the source of all these things in manner of being their creator. In reply, challenging my contention that God could not create love had love not been in his nature itself. Nothing can be the source of anything if it did not possess the product in the first place. But creation is a reflection of God’s own attributes, even if it is infinitely removed from it, and resembles it only in the manner of analogy. Love is the one emotion that does not require a reason, being the reason itself. Love as being the perfect reason and the perfect from of reasoning, becomes the source of everything else, like mercy and justice too.

Person needs Relationship, Relationship needs Distinction, Love needs Relationship

“the existence of a person is philosophically not confined to existence, but to existence in relationship (…) “existence in relationship” is the only principle that gives a person meaning to his or her existence, otherwise there would be no person. For “to be and to be in relation becomes identical . . . It is only in relationship that identity appears as having an ontological significance.” Personhood becomes evident in relationship (…) for a relationship requires an activity between a subject and an object that are distinct from one another” (GWP p.175)

“its (love’s) presence alone without a relationship between distinct persons deprives from the principle of personality, and is rather the opposite of the meaning of personality: ” (quoting Schelling…) by itself cannot have being. Hence a being of all beings (…) is by itself the antithesis of personality. Thus another power making for personality must give it a ground (…) There are thus two principles even in what is necessary in God (…) Richard of St. Victor asserts similarly that if God were one person, he would not experience sharing the richness of what he owns, (…) Nothing can be discovered that gives more pleasure than the sweetness of loving; there is nothing by which the soul is more delighted.” (GWP, p.176)

In fact as Fr. White points out (TNM, 356), St. Richard of Victor is the first great medieval theologian to provide a systematic argument for the rationality of belief in the Trinity. He makes the case by first stating the argument that God must be the “supreme and most perfect good”, and then asserting that this necessitates loving character. Pertinently what he says in relation for the love of another is that “God’s love would not be perfect if he did not love one who is supremely worthy of divine love. But a divine person would surely not have someone whom he could love as worthily as himself, if he absolutely were not having a person of equal dignity (quoting On the Trinity 3.2). Based on this he states that the other person must also be divine.

The Holy Spirit- the Necessity of the Third Person

St. Richard of Victor makes the further argument that the “supreme degree of divine goodness seems to occur when a person bestows supreme love to someone and gains nothing from it toward the fulness of his own happiness” (On the Trinity,3.18, TNM,357). Based on this he states the necessity of the third Person, because love for another can be selfish, whereas love for a third must be shared. It simply is a shared loved by definition. He states (TNM, 357):

When there are only two persons, however, love risks becoming closed in itself, and egotistic, rather than genuinely self-giving. Therefore there must exist a love in God that transcends the mere love of mutual happiness and this can transpire only if there are three persons in God, where the first two persons share in a selfless love of the third person (On the Trinity, 3.18-19). Richard seems to imply here that in any love held between only two persons, there must be an imperfect quality of selflessness, due to the closed-off nature of the relationship. This will be the case unless the two persons share a mutual love for a third. If God is perfect love, then God must be a shared life of three persons in communion.

Fr. White adds (TNM, 358):

“we know from creatures, however, that mutual reciprocity between two persons has something about it that is closed in on itself, incompatible with the idea of perfection of self-giving love/ Therefore there must be an uncreated mutual love in God that is fruitful, of two who give rise to a third.”

The analogy of love in the Holy Spirit flows quite naturally, and seems intuitively unavoidable. That is to say, it seems deeply unsatisfactory to leave the analogy at merely speaker/spoken with no element of “motive”. If one’s “self-awareness” is described as the sum of all one’s thoughts and experiences, what can be called as one’s all-encompassing “experience of existence”, then one engenders an affection for that which is contemplated, oneself (the waxing and waning of such an affection are well described in the medical conditions of depression, mania, megalomania, narcissism pervasive personality disorder etc.). St Thomas says, “First the object is known by the intellect, and knowing it, the intellect tends towards it, or wills it. This is the movement of love.” [ST I, Q.27 Art.3 co.]. Thus there are the three distinct terms in God, “knower”, “known” and “love”: God contemplates his thoughts, and loves that which is contemplated. ) “…you have loved me” (John 17:23,24,26).

While the Son is said to be “begotten” of the Father, as the word is “conceived” in the mind, the Holy Spirit is said to be “spirated”, as love proceeds from the heart in a spirited manner or a “passion”. Now as we alluded to before, in the intellectual operations, knowing is the more readily understandable, precisely because it is knowing, it is not quite so in the case of love. St Aquinas describes this difficulty by saying that there is a term for “to speak”, or “to speak a word” which signifies and with which we are able to represent what has proceeded from the intellect and appreciated by it, or that is spoken of in words. But for what proceeds as love there is no similar term, and so for this procession St Thomas proposes we use the term “spiration” instead. So we could use either “proceeds” or “spirates” for this engendering of love (I’m not advocating using “engendered” at this point out of concern it might be the same as “begets”).

St. Thomas states that in the operation of the “will” it is the Spirit that proceeds, while in the operation of the intellect it is the Word that proceeds, just as love is the desire of the will for the beloved. Thus it is that we have three terms: That which knows, that which proceeds as Word, and that which proceeds as Love [STI, Q37,Art1,co.]. Love has the aspect of willing, while Word the aspect of knowing. We do need to be careful not to create any confusion here in the use of the term “will”, though, keeping in mind that we want to say that all the three divine Persons have the same will. We discuss that in a subsequent section.

(Kelly 274) “ (Augustine says) The Spirit is distinguished from Father and Son inasmuch as He is ‘bestowed’ by Them; He is Their ‘common gift’ (donum), being a kind of communion of Father and Son (quaedam patris etfilii communio), or else the love which They together pour into our hearts…’The Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of one of Them, but of both’…The Father is the author of the Spirit’s procession because He begot such a Son, and in begetting Him made Him also the source from which the Spirit proceeds.’ The point is that, since the Father has given all He has to the Son, He has given Him the power to bestow the Spirit.”

In Summary, in God, the three terms complete what can be called a perfect operation: That which is perfect, is perfectly known and perfectly desired and loved. The operations of the mind as St Thomas says, “remain in the intellect”, and so are not separate, but “immanent”. 

“…But for all this, no matter how good an explanation of the Trinity that can be given, and no matter how clearly we can understand it, it is still a mystery to us…He who is the core of all reality, is eminently logical, but infinitely more so than a finite mind can understand…” -Jim McCrea from his blog.

“For the Persons of the Trinity what you are dealing is distinct terminations of the divine Essence. The Father being infinite in act possesses the fullness of the divine Being, and through his active generation via the essential energies that he has, he communicates the entirety of the divine Being in an infinite act to the Son. So the son as a termination of a perfect act of a Divine Being ad intra will also then be a distinct term with a unique different mode possession of the Divine Being (a different mode of possession)…” – Dr. Jared Goff on Reason and Theology YouTube channel.

The Eastern Orthodox view this slightly differently and it is useful consider their take on the Holy Spirit as well. St. Gregory of Nazianzus simply state there there is another mode of generation from the Father which is not begetting, and that we have not been given knowledge of what it is, and further that there happen to be this limit of two modes only and no more. While that does seem unsatisfactory in the arbitrariness of the limit, we can accept the usefulness of considering that there is indeed another mode of generation apart from begetting.

A note on the filioque question: This was the issue which at least ostensibly led great schism in the Church in the 11^th century: in that the Holy Spirit “spirates” (or “proceeds”) from both Father and Son. St Thomas explains this technically in that for the Persons in God to be distinct there must be an oppositional relationship between them. “Father” and “Son” for example are clearly opposite relations and cannot be conflated. Spirit processing so also is an opposite relation. In order for the Son to be distinct form the Spirit He must also bear an opposite relation to it. Were both Son and Spirit processing opposite terms from “Father”, then as opposites coincide so the Son and the Spirit would bear no distinction.

One objection could be to state that since the divine Substance is Love, it is known by the Father who is the Knower, then why the Holy Spirit too? So the Divine Substance is Love as Spirit, is Known as Son, and is the Knower as Father would be the reply. This is not to Say that the Father does not love, rather the Father does love, in the Spirit, just as the Father does have knowledge, in the Son. So what then is the Divine Substance? Well the divine Substance is Existence itself, but that is not a fourth person, rather that is to say that Existence is the Father and Son’s Love for each other in the Spirit. The reply to this objection goes somewhat along the same lines as the reply to the question of the Will of God and whether the Persons possess Will individually or not which we answered earlier- is is not ss though the Father and Son do not love, rather they do love as “spirating”, while the Spirit loves as the one “spirated”; each has love as each has the other. The same attribute of willing and loving is possessed totally and yet distinctly, and each is the will to love, and we can say the same of the attribute of wisdom and knowledge. The Son has wisdom and is Wisdom as being that which is known.

Existence is a possibility because it is triune or tri-personal. The question then of “how could triunity exist” makes no sense if we do not know in the first place how existence could be.

Imad Shedeh writes (GWU, Kindle version):

“the existence of a third person ensures (…) shared activities (with a third person- my addition) in addition to dual exchanged activity (…) this ensures all forms of relationship between persons (…) the love exchange between two extends beyond the two to become a shared love between three, thereby becoming completed love (…) Without threeness, therefore, the relationship becomes deprived of shared activity. (p.182) (…) three avoids solitude, overcomes separation, and surpasses exclusion (…) Trinity avoids face-to-ace confrontation between Father and Son in a “narcissistic” contemplation. The third figure is the difference, the openness, communion. Trinity is inclusive because it unites what is separated and excluded (quoting here from Boff, Trinity and Society, 3)

(…) Lewis Johnson (quoting from a sermon) says that if God were a duality only instead of being a Trinity, the response of love would be imposed and no optional. But threeness guarantees the integrity of freedom in choosing love and the beloved (…) if he loves teh son and the son is the only other person, you might say he loves the son because the son returns his love. But there is also a Spirit, the three, then we have a perfect expression of love of which there is no required return (…) and each loves out of his own desire to express himself perfectly in love with no requirement of compulsion that love be returned to that other person…” (p.183-184)

The Holy Spirit and Friendship with God- Aquinas in SCG

Herwi Rikhof comments on Aquinas’ SCG IV, ch. 20-22. I’ve spelt out the Scripture passages referred to for ease of use:

“…(Aquinas) discovers in contemplating the various texts about the Spirit from the gospels (mainly John) and the Epistles (mainly Paul) is that they can be best understood as texts about friendship. To put it differently, Aquinas proposes friendship as the model that makes sense of the biblical data about the Spirit. In both chapters he introduces elements that constitute friendship that are “proper” to friendship in order to show why in Scripture the working of the Spirit is presented as it is.

Of course, Aquinas does not invent that model in the sense that he introduces something completely new. He builds upon Scripture. The first quotation in chapter 21 is Rom. 5: 5 where Paul speaks about the caritas dei “that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”. Aquinas, in his commentary on that passage, remarks that caritas dei can be understood in two ways: either the love with which God loves us, or the love with which we love God. The double meaning corresponds to the mutual relationship that is characteristic of friendship. Aquinas also quotes John 15:15, where the Lord says to his disciples that he no longer calls them servants but friends. In his commentary on that text Aquinas again remarks that “friend” has a double meaning: the one that loves and the one that is loved. In chapter 21 he adds that we are God’s friends through the Holy Spirit.

In his analysis on friendship and of what is proper to friendship, Aquinas is clearly inspired by Aristotle. He mentions the following characteristics. It is proper to friendship to be one of heart, to be one of one affect, to reveal one’s secrets. That is why it is so appropriate for Scriptures say that the Spirit reveals to us God’s mysteries (1Cor 2:9-10 ““What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”- God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God”; cf. 14:2 “those who speak in tongues…are speaking mysteries in the Spirit”), that under certain circumstances the Spirit will speak through us (Matt 10:20), and that men moved by the Spirit spoke of God (2 Pet 1:21; (…))

It is proper to friendship that a friend is an alter ego, so that friends share what they have, want the best for each other, do the best for each other. That is why it is so appropriate to say that all God’s gifts are given to us through the Spirit (1 Cor 12:8), that we, by the zeal of the Spirit, are configured to God (2 Cor 1:21-22 “ But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, who has put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a down payment.“ ; Eph 1:13-14 you…were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit…the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people), and that, through the Spirit, become adoptive children of God (Rom 8:15).

It is proper to friendship that offences are removed, for offences and friendship are contrary. And since we are friends of God through the Spirit, it is appropriate to say that through the Spirit our sins are forgiven (Jn 20:22 “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive…”), that those who blaspheme against Spirit do not receive forgiveness (Matt 12: 31) and that the Spirit renews and cleans (Ps. 103:30; Eph 4:23 “be renewed in the spirit of your minds…”- NRSV this is a rather difficult translation, but if it can be seen that the clause “spirit of your mind” does not really make sense, so spirit here should rather be taken as an agent itself “renewed of your mind…in the spirit” ananeousthai de twi pneumati tou noos hymon- my addition; Jam 4:4,5 “God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”).

It is very proper to friends to converse with one another. Our conversation with God is by contemplating him. We contemplate God through the Spirit. That is why the apostle says that we behold the glory of God by the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18 “all of us with unveiled faces…are being transformed into the…image…this comes form the Lord, the Spirit”). It is property of friendship to enjoy your friend’s company and in anxiety to seek a friend’s support and comfort. That is why Scripture says that we, through the Spirit, enjoy God (Rom 4:17 (?); cf. Act 9:31 “…living in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers”), and why the Spirit is called the Paraclete, that is, Comforter (Jn 14: 26).

It is proper to friendship to consent to a friend’s will. To consent to God’s will is to fulfil his precepts, and we do that through the Spirit. Hence Paul says that whoever acts by the Spirit is a child of God (Rom 8: 14 “all who are led by the Spirit of God are the Children of God”). Aquinas adds a reminder: this acting by the Spirit does not entail force and violence but is done in such a way that we freely become children of God. That is why Paul says that we have not received a Spirit of slavery but of sonship (Rom 8:15).

By explaining the texts about the Spirit on the model of friendship, Aquinas indicates the proper way of dealing with God and of thinking about God should be characterised by surplus and surprise, by luxury and abundance, and not by demands and needs or by rights and rewards. To give in order to get might be a natural pattern of expectation in society, and it might also be the “natural” way of dealing with God and thinking about God, but it does not fit friendship and certainly not the divine friendship which is at the heart of our belief in the Trinity.”

(p.53,54, in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Eric Van Nieuwenhove, Joseph Wawrikow, 2005 University of Notre Dame Press)

Why Not More than Three?

The three Persona are of the Holy Trinity are perfectly given and loved. If what was given had been imperfect then more would be required, and fourth, a fifth, of the parts that had not been given yet- we would have more sons, but not perfection. So also had God not been perfectly beloved, then more loves would need be had also of those parts of God that had not been loved yet. By this we could have more spirits of love with once again, none being the perfection of love and a Holy Spirit.

Further as we have seen already, we are not asserting multiple attributes like white, blond, angry, wet and so on. We are only asserting Thought, Thinker, Love. The reason is that the mind’s operations are described fully in these three notions- the entire desire of a mind is for itself, and so with regards to itself, there is not other feeling but love. This is the purest description of mind.

Further when we attempt to give a description of God using our imperfect analogies, we must be careful not to make the situation caused through failing to be cautious and frugal in their use. Therefore keeping this in mind, we will say that “wisdom” in relation to God is sufficient to describe all knowledge. In the case of the second term used, “Love” is sufficient to describe every feeling in God. The reason we require no other feeling in describing God is because all feeling in God is perfect. We call that one feeling by the name of the most perfect feeling known to ourselves, “love”. We cannot comprehend how God feels, neither about himself nor about us and so it is sufficient to ascribe to God the same perfect feeling in both cases. Our own perceived hatred and anger of God is merely the state of being deprived of that feeling of God. If this is not sufficient for the reader then I have explained here in more detail: The Absolute Love of God.

Lastly and perhaps more pertinent than all our philosophizing in the matter, we have no scriptural reason to believe that there are more than three Persons. At the same time, it does feel quite incredible and satisfying that we arrive at the same number of Persons through Scripture as we did through our reasoning. We go through the scriptural details here: Holy Trinity in the Old Testament.

The Will of the Father is perfectly Begotten and perfectly Loved. Thus, “this is my beloved Son” (Matt.3:17) describes the Trinity fully. Thus it is that we can stop at the two processions, as St Thomas says:

“There is no need to go on to infinitude in the divine processions; for the procession which is accomplished within the agent in an intellectual nature terminates in the procession of the will.” [STI, Q27, Art.3, Ad.1]

A Distinction that does not Divide Includes the whole Person

So when faced with the question that will seemingly be eternal upon the Earth: “how can 1+1+1=1?”, which is actually a useful way of asking the question, since it does away with the use of confusing terminology and pre-conception of what is meant by “person” it is not as hard to explain as might be supposed at first glance. The reason for the difficulty is only perceived when we envisage physical substances. However a simple shift to the intellect seems to remove the difficulty. All that is really needed to remove the possibility of an intellectual 1+1+1 situation show how it is that one’s word and one’s love are not the person itself. I strongly argue that they are that person in a very real and substantial sense, as I elaborate upon in the ongoing.

But already we can say that it is hard to see how the entirety of what I think might not be me, nor is love other than the person, if that love is “all-encompassing” and “pure”, and “all-consuming”, the usual romantic epithets. If this is the case then what else am I other than an “agent of love”, to which “all my thoughts are directed”. Of course in the case of love we have to make a more emotional case than an intellectual one, because that is the nature of love after all, so this should hardly be surprising. And yet at the same time one can equally say that the content of thought is not the same as the thinking of it, since one is active while the other is a passive notion, and nor is love the same as the first two. If the love is for oneself and particularly for one’s word “conceived” by the mind, then it too remains distinct from that which is conceived. Here we see how “conception” too is a useful term since it is primarily intellectual rather than biologic, stemming as it does from “concept”.

Thus it does not seem discrepant to state that that which is the full description of that Person is also Personal, or that it is “personal Knowledge”, and that were that Knowledge Love, that that loving Knowledge is Personal. We we to do no more than stare at the sky and pray to one God either as having no further thought regarding these distinctions or having such thoughts, it would make no difference to worship. The problem comes not in the revelation of God as having certain distinction, and yet being one, rather the come in with the Incarnation of the Son of God and now with us being given to witness the real conversation between the Persons, about us and about themselves.

God’s Attributes are God

Human Beings describing God- the Pitfalls

When asked to describe God, irrespective of one’s religious background, we do so using positive attributes and superlatives like “loving”, “powerful”, “knowledgeable”, and so forth. While all this seems quite innocuous on the surface, it is actually the subject of possibly the greatest theological debate- just what does it mean for God to have attributes? The reason it is an issue and even the central issue of theology is because it involves a human being attempting to describe the infinite and transcendent deity, something he fully realizes is well beyond his comprehension. Is describing God no more than merely “maxing out” on all the adjectives? What does it really mean, to describe God, and what is the wrong manner to claim to do so, these are issues we will look at in this section.

Do Qualities fully describe physical objects?

Qualities are the manner in which we describe physical objects, but what about the immaterial God, is it right to simply employ the same manner of description in relation to him? We will show conclusively that this is precisely the error that distinguishes good theology from bad.

First, consider that when it comes to physical things, we can appreciate certain “qualities” in them that are the resultant from their molecular and atomic structures and the manner in which these interact with us chemically and physically. It is these very interactions that give rise to our perceptions of them and engender our emotions toward them. This is the origin of the “qualities” that we are familiar with (fn- even our most abstract attributes that we perceive in other things, like their being angry or loving for example, are dependent upon the integrity of those structures and of physical systems in them and how they interact with the environment).

Thus when we talk about “qualities” of a person, we typically do not conceive of those qualities themselves as completely constituting the person. We do not describe its physical/atomic/sub-atomic structure, rather we have a sense in which those qualities are emergent from the latter. Nor also do we specify all the details of generic “humanity” common to all every time that we describe a given individual.

Could it however be scientifically possible to completely describe a person in terms of his qualities were we able to provide a detailed description of the “qualities” of is quantum states? It’s hard to say with certainty whether that would work or not, and factors like probability and the uncertainty principle would be barriers to this being the case.

To summarize and conclude, what we experience as qualities of a physical object or person cannot possibly constitute that entity since it is wholly subjective to us. However do our subjective experiences even correspond in some manner to a complete description of the entity in question? The answer is once again probably not, because it is much more likely that these experiences are reflective of emergent effects of the substance of that entity and interaction with it. Now bearing in mind that this is a difficult problem in epistemology, one of whether we can truly know “things as they are in themselves”, we are merely making the point that in descriptions of the qualities of physical entities, the question of whether or not even the most complete set of those qualities would constitute that entity completely will always remain in doubt. However we will go on from here to make the point that in the case of God, this is not necessarily the case at all, in fact the opposite is true of God.

God’s Word and Intellect cannot but be God himself

Say that we call all the Wisdom and intelligence of God his “Word”. Were this “Word” not God, then a simple Venn diagram representation would show that what God was would be something unintelligent with a claim on something intelligent that were other than himself. Mind that we are not merely using a concept of “database” here when we speak of word, rather of “thinking capacity”, because it is the capacity to think and “intelligence” that is the attribute rather than the mere presence of data storage. Content of knowledge is not merely a “quality” of the intellect if its removal means the negation of intellect altogether. It simply is the intellect itself. Computers store data but they are not intellects themselves because they cannot read that data or comprehend it consciously, for this they must be joined to an external intellect. Knowledge is not a flavor the mind, rather there is very little to call “mind” without it. God’s intellect is not a storehouse of data devoid of mind, nor mind devoid of any data.

Examining this further, what would this “intelligence” of God consist in? We ourselves can never hope fully describe God and all our descriptions would barely even scratch the surface were we to try. God’s Word on the other hand, is that by which he describes himself, and indeed he can describe himself, being God. Such a word is hardly going to consist in human terms and phrases, rather if anything it would be something like a transcendent term. Such a term would have to be the most profound thought or term ever possible, and therefore an infinite Word. There is the problem- God’s “Word”- the description of God which is known to God is also Infinite, eternal and simultaneous with him. God cannot think of himself, except that he think an infinite and eternal Word. However were God different from his Word then this would yield two infinities. We must therefore conclude that the infinite intelligence of describing God is God himself.

The Concept of Concrete and Abstract

We could get into endless debates about the reality/unreality of abstract thought and concepts vis a vis nominalism and so on, but we hardly need to get into that quagmire here. God is himself actually the most abstract entity ever conceivable- he is unknowable, intangible, unseen, and did not even come into existence! and yet this most eminently undefinable entity, is actually what true reality is, and he literally speaks things into reality. Every word of God is an instant reality, it is more real than the reality that is created. When God speaks to us, however, he “finitizes” his description for our understanding. This is why even a book like the Bible is not itself God. So it’s we don’t really have a premise for the contention that God’s words might not have a concrete reality, when in fact it is more likely that they are the only true reality and all that is truly real. In the case of humans, our bodies are as a pre-condition to our intellects, so that intellect/rationality is not conceivable to us apart from as associated with a physical body. On the other hand, God is himself the pre-condition of everything and is rationality itself.

God is Identical to his Attribute(s)

God is described in the New Testament in language that is congruent to the argument that we are making here, for example in 1John4:8 and 16, twice we read “God is love”, while in I John we read “the Word was God”. Even in the Old Testament we find God speaking in these terms “I will make all my goodness pass before you…” (Ex.33:19) and “…the LORD, whose name is jealous” (Ex.34:14)

We’ve already began to describe in a previous section how from our common experience “qualities” don’t seem to fully constitute physical objects, and there seems to be the notion of a missing physical “receptacle”, so to speak. However consider that when one holds up a cup of wine, for example the best description of what one is holding is the wine itself rather than the empty glass that contains it. Every human person is different and those differences are dependent on the relative proportions of common attributes present in those persons. Thus, our relative attributes in comparison to others literally determine and describe what we are over and above the generic descriptor “humanity”. And yet we are aware that in describing them, we have left out the fact of our common humanity. That is the crux of the difference between a description of us and of God- when we describe specific qualities, we assume the generic, but with God, there is no “generic”, the qualities are himself. In us there remains the sense in which our specific qualities are contained within that generic receptacle called “humanity” common to us all and at the same time unavoidable by us all. God on the other hand, is just what he is, rather than something determined by comparative descriptors- God is like he is.

The Descriptive Power of Human Attributes

Rational entities are a swathe of attributes like memories, thoughts, emotions, ambitions and so on. Physical attributes might be seen to have a secondary bearing on personality: were a person to lose any physical attribute, they would be regarded as the same person or “identity” regardless. Yet these too do indeed form an aspect of personality, like “pretty”, “muscular”, “obese”, “ill” and so on.

Take the attribute of intelligence, for example. Intelligence is not “merely” an attribute, it is us. The thing that is reading this article is not your attribute, rather it is you that is reading.  One’s love, hate, strength etc. are not conceived as “other” than oneself. Were a loving person to change into a hateful one, people immediately perceive him as “different person”, or “not like him”, never “he has a different love”, or “this is not like his love”. Far from being other than him/her, a person’s attributes are what define that person. Were we to strip away all a person’s attributes one by one, we should effectively reach a point where we strip away the whole person! To state “my attributes defines me, but I am not my attributes” is to state “what defines me is not me” or “That which defines what I am is not what I am”. Take the unfortunate examples of stroke or dementia victim who lose their personality. There is a real sense in which one can ask the question: “is my father/mother/grandfather still this person?” (I know how hard this is for those experiencing these issues, I trust the reader appreciates that it is pertinent to the conversation).

When we experience the Love of God, are we experiencing God or are we experiencing that which is not God? When Creation experiences God’s Power is it experiencing God or is it experiencing what is not God. When someone experiences mercy what are they experiencing, are they not given a direct experience of a merciful person? When you feel your Mother’s love you are experiencing “your Mother” directly or not? If not, could that mean that one has never had a direct experience of their own mother? Does one say “mommy, I love your attributes”? Or “Mommy I love you”? Does one merely love a mother’s actions?

God does not have partial attributes, he always acts perfectly. The human analogy is always going to be imperfect, and yet we might have glimpses of perfection might be like. For example, when we say “his mother loved him with every last drop of her blood, or from the bottom of her heart, or “with her whole being” or “with her whole heart and soul’ it really means that within human limitations, that love completely defines that person, since nothing is held back, no part of her “person” is withheld from the love of her child. Say that mother is devoted to her whole family in that manner and actually she shares a noble love of all humanity. Take away that love, what exactly is left of that person?

“Personality” could well be just one Quality: While qualities might constitute personality severally, there seems no a priori reason why in God they might not also do so individually and constitute not just the personality, but the Divine entity itself. After all the human specimen is conflicted in quality and divided in nature into spiritual and physical, and further by existence and essence, while God is neither conflicted in quality, nor divided in essence. That alone should make the consideration of the simplification to be at least a possibility.

Is God the quality of being Godly?

James Dolezal states makes the pertinent observation that since God is boundless existence and possesses in himself all the fulness of being, that itself is the greatest possible and transcendent attribute, it would not make sense for there to be in him further particular determinations of that being in the form of what we might call attributes in addition:

“If God is identical to his own “to be” then there cannot be any determination of being, such as an attribute or property, that is added to him. Accordingly, he cannot possess attributes as so many determinations (determinations in italics) of being.” (GWP,136)

Can it really be valid to hold that God’s attributes do not have their own ontological reality themselves, rather are felt-effects emergent of his essence as they seemingly are in us. There is no reason God cannot be that which his creation cannot be: identical to his quality(s). There is no a priori reason that an incorporeal being should be a “thing with attributes” like corporeal things, when the whole point of incorporeality is that there is no “thing” in the first place.

But what of the the apparent multiplicity of attributes in God, without a corporeal body would they need to somehow hold on to each other through some mutual attractive force? In fact any multiplicity of attribute in God is only our own subjective impression and in reality God has only one “attribute”- that of being “divine”. God simply IS the attribute of being God. Considering the concept of God might certainly cause in us subjective feelings that we normally recognize as “love”, “kindness”, “wisdom” and so on. For some it might also cause feelings of hated and being unjustly treated. Such subjective impressions exist wholly and solely in us.

God is not a delineated as a body is, rather he is the opposite, which is unbounded existence itself. Just as God is not a body that exists rather existence itself, so also he is not a quality of a body rather quality itself. What we describe God as, is actually God.

God Experiences himself, not the Quality of himself

If “attribute” is meant to denote the notion of “quality” then it contains the notion of that which is experienced. As we said before, this might be experienced by ourselves or by the entity itself. A solitary entity must however itself experience its own qualities. Therefore it must, if knowledge be a quality of it, have the experience of being knowledgeable. The same for being loving or being powerful. The source of those experiences of itself must necessarily be inherent to the substance of the entity itself. For example the entity could not possibly have the experience of being knowledgeable were it not to have any inherent knowledge. Similarly it could not possibly have the experience of love, or of being loving were love not inherent to its substance. In fact love is quite a stumbling block for the self-experience of the solitary entity- what could it possibly be about its substance that could cause in it the subjective experience of being loved or being drawn to love? We feel drawn to love because we experience something that cares for us, just as we feel loved by it. What could it be in a solitary entity that made it feel cared for or affected? Again, the solitary entity could not experience power or being powerful were power not inherent to it. Thus overall, the deity’s experiences can only arise from what is inherent to it.

So we hear the objection that a “mere” quality could not compose the deity, and rather that it’s no more than an abstract description of it, or that “qualities” have no real/independent existence, the reason for this perception is clearly based upon human experience: Our qualities are merely descriptive features of our physical bodies. But God does not have a physical body, and so his Divinity (or attribute of Divinity) is himself. His Attribute itself is his Substance because it does not require to emerge from any other substance.

We can make a further argument here to reinforce the case: A. body is something that is defined by its boundary. If God had a boundary it would be enclosed within something else, and that would be absurd. God can have neither physical nor spiritual body. Angels have spiritual bodies, and that is why they are delimited and not boundless, creation encloses them and they are not beyond creation, even if they are not spatial. So there is no need to say that the Divinity is a Divinity with the attribute of divinity that is not the Divinity itself. You can see how that gets repetitive.

God is his Divinity. Call it his attribute or call it his Substance/Essence, calling it different things does not affect him, it might just make it easier for us to speak about him. God does not require two separate concepts of Substance and quality of that Substance. We experience and describe qualities of God’s Substance but that doesn’t mean there’s two things in God. The quality of God Which we perceive is a result of God’s essence, not the result of something that is additional to God’s essence, or different from it. The quality of God which we perceive is not a result of something which is not his essence.

Qualities that are present in us only belong to God analogically. The only resemblance is as effect is to it’s cause. And in reality this is a qualitatively infinite difference such that what these attributes are in God is nothing like what they are in us. One of those significant differences is that in God they do not inhere in any body rather they themselves are divine. Gods attributes are infinite because they are the divinity itself. The fundamental difference, one might say, between God’s attributes and ours is that God’s attribute is itself divine.

Our experience of the multiple attributes of the single Divinity

At the same time all those attributes that we ascribe to God, in God are all identical to each other, and to his Essence. This is Divine Simplicity (the topic of the next article).

St. Thomas explains how the unity of God’s essence is perceived multiply:

“But our intellect, since it knows God from creatures, in order to understand God, forms conceptions proportional to the perfections flowing from God to creatures, which perfections pre-exist in God unitedly and simply, whereas in creatures they are received and divided and multiplied. As therefore, to the different perfections of creatures, there corresponds one simple principle represented by different perfections of creatures in a various and manifold manner, so also to the various and multiplied conceptions of our intellect, there corresponds one altogether simple principle, according to these conceptions, imperfectly understood. Therefore although the names applied to God signify one thing, still because they signify that under many and different aspects, they are not synonymous.” (STI.13.4)

The philosopher Dr. Matthew Minerd makes a very illuminating comment on the difficulty of the many and the one in God: “whenever you’re applying a notion between created being and Uncreated Being , like the notion of being itself, or goodness, or unity (…) in us unity is dispersed, whereas in God it is a pure uncreated unity… The very basis of that comparison you’re both affirming and denying…whenever you apply to the first Cause unity as an attribute, you’re both affirming and denying what you mean by unity in its primary sense for you: the lack of division in a creature bestowed upon it by its form, so that its matter is held together over a lifetime, within a single history- that is its substantial unity, its history so to speak. Whereas in God it is simply uncreated unity (…) for that reason the abstraction of unity from its inferiors is not perfect. Unity itself is affected in its application to us and in its application to God…” (from a talk on the Reason and Theology channel, 24^thOct.2020)

The other obvious objection is what do we do then with all the different qualities of God. The answer is that they’re again only our perception and description of Him. In him there’s only one attribute: Divinity. In Christianity we would say that God has only one attribute, the attribute of divinity, beyond which we cannot comprehend. We use multiple words to express the manner in which we experience that divinity. That does not mean that God subjectively experiences the same division in concepts or substance. That single attribute of divinity is possessed tri-personally- the same attribute of divinity existing in three distinct personal relations.

We experience God in this tri-Personal manner because God is Triune, in fact this is the very reason for our creation and existence. That is to say, we experience the fecundity of the Father in our creation itself, and God’s Mercy in his desire for our generation from nothingness. We experience the desire to know him and commune with him as Children in the filial nature of the Second Person, the Son, the Wisdom and the Word of God. And we experience Love and the desire to return to God in the third Person, the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Love of the Father and Son. Thus the multiplicity of Persons in God explains his intention in our creation, which is no more than a finite expression of his own trinitarian image of infinite familial love.

The multiplicity of Persons in God explains the Power of God’s Love which is his omnipotence: God is indeed perfectly one, the single attribute of divinity, and yet he possesses the dynamism of the relations between the Persons. You could say that God’s power is related to the strength of these relationships, or the strength with which these relationships are held, which is also the power of Love. The Persons possess that divinity “relatively”, that is, as given to each other fully, rather than competitively, as divided among them partially. Without a real description, all we are left with in terms of theology is as no more than labels upon a white-board.

The only Description of God and Distinction is the Trinitarian relations

The only description of God, is the inter-relation of the Three Persons. The three terms “Father, Son, Spirit of Love”, represent the full description of the Substance of God, and together say everything about Him. Taken together, this is a Substantial and complete description of God: God is divinely paternal, divinely filial and divinely loving. In this sense Christianity only adds one piece of information to the basic affirmation of monotheism, which in itself contains no further information other than the claim that there is a God. Again, when we say “God loves himself”, we are essentially stating that God is a Trinity of Persons. This is to say that God is roughly speaking, that which loves, that which is beloved, and the love itself. Trinitarianism is the only manner in which any distinctions might be accorded to God.

A Language of Trinitarianism in Attributes

That God’s attributes are these particular attributes: “Father”, “Word” and “Love”, means that it is possible for God be the same as his own Attributes, as a Word that can be perfectly spoken and perfectly beloved. At the same time no other attributes are required and we can stop at three (as we discuss later). The three Persons are the same one God in virtue of their particular relations as Father, Son and Spirit of Love, else it could not be so. God’s attributes are God- Begotten and Beloved. Again, we can even give a philosophical proof of this hypothesis- were God to speak an imperfect word, it would split the substance of God into that, and the deficit in perfection.

That God’s attributes are God supports a Johannine theism (God is Love, Word of God is God), as well as Divine Simplicity, since there is nothing in God apart from “Attribute” or “Attribute of Divinity”. For God to be anything other than “just attribute” would obviate monotheism itself, since it necessitates positing two things that God is (attribute plus non-attribute, we do a thorough examination on this is the Divine Simplicity article). But God for God to be Simple and nothing other than what he IS, i.e. his Attribute, gives us the language of Trinitarianism- that the all the three: Father, Son and Spirit are “what God is”, while at the same time, and notwithstanding the difficulties, gives us a language of multiplicity in unicity, for we have human analogies for multiple attributes.

Because there is nothing “in God” apart from “what God is”, all the Three (or any number) posited of God, can be no “other thing” but God. Were God anything other than Attribute, it should be possible that one Person be the attribute, while the other be the other thing, but Divine Simplicity by not permitting the “other thing”, avoids this problem.

The reason that God being pure Attribute does not allow for Theistic Monism is due to the problems of the undistinguished entity (as discussed in detail the TM article). All the Three Persons are that same Attribute of “What God is” and therefore Divinity (or the attribute of Divinity), and somehow they are that attribute in different ways. As we stated before, “Father, Son, Holy Spirit” of Love describe God completely, and “description” is precisely what it means to be called an attribute.

Does God have one Attribute or Three?

All the Gospels tell us God is Father and Son, while John adds “Word” for Son, and Love. If God is one, it must mean that those are all the same attribute of “Divinity”, the quality of being God. We are only able to say this much with full certainty, give the limitation of our language- God has one attribute, the attribute of Divinity, or put slightly differently- what it is to be God, is God. In a way that we cannot understand, there are three distinctions in that one quality, or Divinity. Although distinct, are still the same Divinity, and there are only three such distinctions. Each is distinct not in “what” it is, which is the Divinity, but in its relation to the other two, just as we have in the analogy of the mind (I have a more detailed discussion of the category of “relation” in the appendix which might be helpful). Without such distinctions we can do nothing but fall into all the problems posed by Theistic Monism.

We can put it like this: non-Trinitarian religions will state, and rightly so, that attributes are merely what we have to say about God and the words and feelings that we use to describe what we think he might be like. The Divinity is largely or completely untouched by these “attributes”, it is to say nothing about his Nature itself- “Divinity”. Christianity also touches upon exactly what this quality of “Divinity”, God-ness is and it is Three Persons. Those Persons are not merely the same person expressed three times, rather we could describe them as the type of qualities that relate to one another perfectly in begetting, being begotten, and being the love of each for the other. This relation is such that the three are the same Essence.

Divine Co-Equality

Certain passages get brought up as objections to the possibility of co-equality of the Divine persons like “I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28). This “greater-than”  is purely in the “order of generation”, or a “relational priority”– not a temporal type of inferiority. There is no other sense in which the Son is lesser than the Father. The objection is sometimes raised as to why there are there not more persons in God. The reason is the very perfection of the “processions” in God. The Word proceeds perfectly from the Father, which is precisely why it is only One. In other words, it is impossible that there be “more than the Father’s Word”, or it could not be the Father’s Word. That Word is loved perfectly, so there is nothing in the Father that is not Love for the Son. It is impossible to propose “more” Love for the Son than that which is the Holy Spirit of the Father. Put it this way: if the distinction in God is to be “Word”, then it is impossible that there be more than the Son, and if the third distinction is “Love” then it is impossible that there be more than the Holy Spirit. We’ve seen these arguments already when we described why there could not be a fourth person in the Trinity. Here we have the nuance that being perfect, it cannot be lesser than the Father. The Father does not have any “words” that the Son does not have “all that the Father has is mine”. This means that there is nothing “by which” the Father is superior to the Son apart from that he is the Father and not the Son.

It is only right for a Son to acknowledge the superiority of his father if only for the fact that it is the father. A Father is greater than a son by sheer virtue of paternity, all else being equal, like power and dignity. The Knower first knows, and then love what they know- that is merely an unavoidable intellectual order. “The Father is greater than I” is merely the definition of the Father Son relationship. What Christianity is asserting is not that this “greater than” does not remain but rather that it pertains to nothing other than that intellectual “order of generation” whereby the Father-Son relationship arises.

There is no difference in power, authority or glory between Jesus and the Father which can be seen in these verses: “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.” (John 5 19) “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one’…” (John 10:29)

NJBC says: Two sections describe the activity of the Son, giving life and judging, as the reflection of what He has “seen” the Father doing.  Jesus will insist that he is the true agent of the Father. He never acts on his own authority but only on what he has heard from the Father. There is a definite hierarchy here that Jesus is indicating by the Father’s superiority, but this is hardly surprising to Christians because we understand that Jesus always did the Father’s will, and this was and is his joy. In the Holy Trinity the Three Persons are working together and not alone, but although the act is same, the role in that act is not, these roles flow necessarily from the Relations of Father, Son, Spirit. The Father gives authority and power, the Son receives authority and power, and because all is given and all is received, both are therefore co-equal in power and authority. In the trinitarian relationship there is an ORDER OF PROCESSION. This is an eternal procession with EQUALITY of POWER and DIGNITY wherein the Father “speaks”, while the Son is ”spoken”. That there is an order means that it cannot be the other way round.  Similarly also, there is one who “Sends” and the other who is “Sent”, the one as “willing” and the other its perfect Fulfilment.

Order of “Superiority” does not Divide

The first consideration in the matter of the divine Persons being co-equal, is that of power, for we assign superiority in measure to power. In God, power can be spoken of in terms of knowledge and love, because God is His Knowledge, and God is Love (1Jn4:8). God being perfect, His operations (actions) must be perfect. So to say “God knows himself”, as we have said, is to say that God knows himself perfectly. This “self-knowledge” of God is an “internal operation (action)”, there is nothing external to God essentially. Therefore we can say that such an “internal operation” in God being perfect, “constitutes God entirely, God is his knowledge. (Were God not to know or love himself fully, then the part not known/ loved would then constitute a separate entity, dividing God into two parts. Consider how man’s mind in its imperfect self-knowledge might be “divided against itself”, or “be its greatest enemy” etc.) The Father, knowing himself perfectly, generates (or “begets”) the Eternal Word which is the same essence as Himself. (Thus the other name of the Son is “Image” in the Gospels, as St Thomas points out). Thus in the first instance we can see that the Son is co-equal to the father in that both are the same perfection. God the Omniscient knows himself the Omnipotent.

The “perfect knowledge” of the Father of the Son, means that there is nothing of the Father that is not the Son, and thus The Father in begetting the Son is wholly “given” to the Son as his “Knowledge”. As St. Thomas states: “…the Father in begetting the Son does not transmit any part of His nature, but communicates His whole nature to Him, the distinction only of origin remaining…” [STI, Q 41, Art.3 co.] Were the Father to hold back from this total giving in the “begetting”, He would be superior to the Son by virtue of that which was held back. The Holy Spirit who is the Love of the Father and Son for each can be said to be co-equal to both in the same manner, for the Persons are “wholly given” in love. That is to say that not only is the entire essence of the Father the essence of the Son as completely known, but the entire essence of the Father is Love for the Son, as completely loved. If anything of the Father was not love for the Son, then the Holy Spirit would be less than the Father, and the Father would be “holding back” His love.

When the Church Fathers use “causation”, it means “generation”, which is the same as “begotten-ness”. “this results in subordinationism”? I totally agree with your answer here, it was very good. Again I would also point out that its question begging “the Son is subordinate to the Father because he is generated from the Father”. But a son is necessarily generated from a father anyway, it does not make him subordinate except from the aspect of being generated itself, without which he would not be a Son. The subordination still needs to be proven.

“…he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 6:26b)

He’s equivocating terms when he compares temporal generation and eternal generation. One is causation and the other is not. Its an equivocation fallacy isn’t it? “it is a contradiction in terms to say that the Son is caused to be uncaused” that should really read- The Son is eternally generated, not temporally caused. The whole point of eternity is that there is not succession of events, so the generatedness and the generating are co-eternal, which means that the Son “depends on the Father” only as much as the Father depends on the Son, when in fact the terms “co-dependency” is superfluous, rather it is merely co-equality. This is not hard to demonstrate, for in Quantum Mechanics it is well known that the arrow of time does not exist and quantum equations are freely reversible, so anyone with  acknowledge of popular science would be able to access this analogy.

“the Son is ontologically dependent upon the Father” again what is ontologically dependent upon God is a creature, period. This is not what Gregory of Nyssa meant clearly. He may have struggled with terms. We cannot state “the human Nature had a God” were that true then his God would be himself, God the Son. That would mean that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity of God had a worshipper included (or worshipped himself). I also don’t hold to “Jesus did not know the hour”. The obvious fall-out of holding to either of these is the possibility of Nestorianism.

We can sees Aquinas stating that a “principle” is “that whence a thing comes”, meaning it only designates the point of origin without specifying a mode of origin (like causation). As he states:

“I answer that, The word “principle” signifies only that whence another proceeds: since anything whence something proceeds in any way we call a principle; and conversely. As the Father then is the one whence another proceeds, it follows that the Father is a principle. The Greeks use the words “cause” and “principle” indifferently, when speaking of God; whereas the Latin Doctors do not use the word “cause,” but only “principle.” The reason is because “principle” is a wider term than “cause”; as “cause” is more common than “element.” For the first term of a thing, as also the first part, is called the principle, but not the cause. Now the wider a term is, the more suitable it is to use as regards God (I:13:11), because the more special terms are, the more they determine the mode adapted to the creature. Hence this term “cause” seems to mean diversity of substance, and dependence of one from another; which is not implied in the word “principle.” For in all kinds of causes there is always to be found between the cause and the effect a distance of perfection or of power: whereas we use the term “principle” even in things which have no such difference, but have only a certain order to each other; as when we say that a point is the principle of a line; or also when we say that the first part of a line is the principle of a line.” [STIQ33Art.1]

The Divine Co-Equality

The essence of each of the Divine Persons is wholly the other Persons. Were it not, the Persons of the Holy Trinity could not be co-equal. What’s more, the difference would constitute a partition and introduce “composition” into the divine Substance. To be specific, we end up with that part which is equal (or “given”), and that part which is the difference (or “held back”) in begetting, for example. God can only be one if the Three Persons are Co-equal:

The Father as “Giver”:

Jesus says: “”the Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands” (Jn.3:35); “All things have been handed over to me by my Father” (Mt.11:27); “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt.28:18); “It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” (Jn 1:18); that the Father “shows the Son all things…” (Jn.5:19, also 5:20,22);

“I declare to the world what I have heard from him” (J.8:26b); “I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father” (Jn.15:17) and St Paul says “he will place everything at his feet” (1Cor.15:27). All authority is of the Father, and yet this authority is also “given”, and not some, but “all”, and things are “shown” Him by the Father, as being his Begotten Word. This then, Jesus as the Son of God and his Eternal Word reveals to us and “shows us the Father”. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God” (John 13:3); “All that the Father has is mine (NRSV)” (Jn 16:15).  “All mine are yours, and yours are mine” (Jn 17:10). “since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” (Jn.17:2)

The Son as Submissive and Obedient:

Thus in God though there is ontological co-equality, the Father is Begetter and the Son is Begotten; the Father is Father and the Son is Son. This is why as we shall see below, the Son is always submissive to the Father, as his “only Begotten Word”. Submission is not to be taken as inferiority. The Son himself is wholly conformed to the Father. Think for a moment about your thoughts and how all the thoughts that you conceive (or “beget”), all put together form your “word”. Imagine that “word” were not conformed to your intellect, that with which you conceived them, and one can get a feel of how persons suffer from “internal conflicts” and the various forms of mental illness. In God, the Word is completely conformed to the Father, fulfilling perfectly the “vocation” of his Sonship, the Word fulfilling perfectly what it means to be a Word of God.

The Son on the other hand, is “obedient”, what one would expect of a Son: In Mt.20:21-23 he tells the mother of James and John, while acknowledging that he will be enthroned in Heaven, yet that the places to his right and left are decided by his Father, not him. Here Jesus describes his eternal begetting from the Father: “…I live because of the Father” (Jn.6:57); ” for it is not I alone who judge but I and the Father who sent me” (Jn.8:16b); “I do nothing of my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me” (Jn.8:28); “I always do what is pleasing to him” (Jn.8:29b); “Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks it (…) If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, ‘He is our God,’ (John 8:50,54) “the words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works”(Jn.14:10)…“the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me” (John 14:24); “I do as the Father has commanded me” (14:31) and “if you keep my commandments you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10); “…and Christ belongs to God” (1 Cor 3:23) “…when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father… the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him…” (1 Cor 15:24, 28) “And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (IJn.5:11);

(fn- in addition, there are actions that Jesus performs in his humanity, these actions are not taken as strictly Trinitarian, rather Incarnational which we do not discuss here but I make a note that they often come up in objections raised from other faiths). Just as the Father takes pleasure in the Son, and it is his pleasure to give him all authority, so also it is the Son’s pleasure to abide by the Father’s Will. “ My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (Jn 4:34)

“He does not do the Father’s will incidentally but lives from it (4:34); He always seeks it (5:30), because apart from it He can do nothing (5:19). He defines this “having come” in terms of doing the will of him who sent him (6:38), performing his works (9:4), and speaking his words (3:34; 12:49)…” Balthasar, TD3DP

The Holy Spirit as Proceeding or “Spirating”:

The Holy Spirit who “searches the deeper things of God, knows the thoughts of God”, (1 Cor 2:11) is sent by the Father (John 14:16). God is as we have seen pure Intellect and to “know the thoughts of God” is no less than to be God, and none can be God but God’s “own spirit”, “God is spirit” (John). It is also said of the Holy Spirit that he “will speak whatever he hears…”, “he will take what is mine and declare it to you…” (Jn 16:13)

The “Relationship of Giving”:

“God does not need the creature for his fulfilment (as all pantheism assumes, be it of static or the dynamic-evolutionist kind). In particular, according to Christian dogmatics, God the Father is under no necessity to separate himself from the product of his fruitfulness. He does not generate the Son in order to have a vessel into which to pour out his richness, but out of the superabundant fullness of his “selfless” love, which is not stimulated to self-communication by anything outside itself. Similarly, the answer in the form of the Son does not come, as it were, to the Father’s “aid”: He is a response of equal stature; and the Spirit, the fruit of their love, proceeds from their union- as their essence, their product, their testimony, their matrix- but he does not become an independent and separate instance, founding new generations himself. Thus the life of the Trinity if a circle, eternally fulfilled in itself; it does not need the world…” Balthasar TD3DP, 287

We begin to discern the meaning of “fatherhood” in the eternal realm when we consider the Son’s task, which is to reveal his Father’s love (a love that goes to ultimate lengths, for example the Parable of the Prodigal Son or of the Vineyard): Such “fatherhood” can only mean the giving away of everything the Father is, including the entire Godhead (for God as God “has” nothing apart from what he “is”); it is a giving-away that, in the Father’s act of generation- which lasts for all eternity- leaves the latter’s womb “empty”: In God, poverty and wealth (that is, the wealth of giving) are one and the same (F.Ulrich and A. Brunner). As God however, the Son must be equal to the Father, even though he has come forth from the Father. And since the Father has expressed his whole love- which nothing can hold back-in the Son, the Son is the perfect image of the Father apt to represent the Father’s self-giving in  his creation is every respect. The Father cannot do this because he has given everything in and to the Son (…) this is precisely what is revealed to the world when the Father surrenders all his love, embodied in the Son.” (p518-9 Balthasar, TD3DP)

Were God not “Trinity”, nor Could Jesus be “Given”:

We summarise our initial meaning when we stated the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as “necessary”. None of what we have mentioned in the past discussion would be possible had there been no Trinitarian monotheism. Not only that Jesus could not die but that there is no sending, God simply could not be “Giver” and “Gift” simultaneously.

Divine Processions as Eternal, not Successive

Now one cannot “know” except there be that which can be “known”. The “knower” and that which is “known” are ontologically simultaneous (they must exist simultaneously). The same can be said about the simultaneity of love, for none can love except that the beloved first exist. In love superiority is tyranny! Thus the “processions” in the Holy Trinity, viz. “knower” to “known” to “love of the known and knower” are not successive, rather these are “eternal processions” in God. God obviously knows himself perfectly from all eternity rather than “growing in knowledge” of himself. Therefore God and Word and necessarily co-equal.

The Father knows the Son, his Word perfectly and so the Son is perfectly equal to the Father, being his Word perfectly, and because he is perfectly loved, and that there is nothing in the Father that is not Love for the Son, so also is the Love which is the Holy Spirit perfectly co-equal to the Father and Son.

Again the Trinitarian language is quite explicit in the Gospel of John. This is from the Gospel reading for the Feast of the Pentecost: “Gospel John 15:26-27,16:12-15 The Spirit of truth will lead you to the complete truth Jesus said to his disciples: ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who issues from the Father, he will be my witness. And you too will be witnesses, because you have been with me from the outset. ‘I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He will glorify me, since all he tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: All he tells you will be taken from what is mine.’

Will and Agency in the Person of the Trinity

Distinctions in the Divine Will

There is only one divine Will, not three. Three different will entails discrepant thought content corresponding to that difference, which in turn would entail partitions corresponding to the Divine Substance and divisions between the Persons. For wills to be different, the persons need to will different things. Rather, it is the single Will of God which has three distinctions, same as is the case with the divine Substance itself, which are the Personal distinctions themselves. Thus we describe the distinctions in the Will as identical to the personal distinctions in the Trinity. Each Person possesses the same divine Will, and it is the Relations that individuate the Will of God.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are Persons fully given to one another in love. Love and Thought in God is a “mutual self-giving” of the whole Being of the Deity to Himself in love. In this manner the Trinitarian processions are a single perfect act of the fulfilment of love. It is possible to say this of the Divine Essence since in it there is no external referent /recipient/ patient, rather the act is terminated internally. Thus in God we have a single agency, resulting from the distinct roles of the three Persons. The question then is not so much “how can the three Persons be one?” as “If the three Persons of the Holy Trinity are each other’s very acts of thinking and loving, then how can they not be one?” Since they are the very Love and Word of the other, there is no separation of agency or will- they “will” each other and nothing else.

There might be some dissatisfaction in that only the Father is seemingly the “active” agent of the will. However what the Father wills is the Son himself and therefore the role of the Father in willing is not in exclusion of the other two Persons. For although the Father is as one “willing”, equally it is the Son that is the fulfilment of the Will and the Spirit that is the loving purpose of it, or we can say that it is the love for it. We seem to intuitively think of will as an active “initiation”, and understandably so, since it has for us the connotation of “initiative”, “motivation” and so on. It seems to us as though the “motive” lay with the Father here, and it seems uncertain how the other two Persons could be ascribed motive. Where the difference lies with God, and as we have just pointed out, is that the operation of the Will is internally terminated rather than upon an external object that is willed temporally. In contrast, human willing requires “initiation”, and “termination” in time. In this manner we can see how the human model is imperfect, precisely for which reason it should not be extrapolated onto the divine. In human terms the object willed is not the same as that which is performing the act of willing, nor might it necessarily be the case that the letter ever be fulfilled it, while in God that in which the will is initiated is eternally and lovingly fulfilled in the object of its desire. At the same time, we can see from the human analogy that in order for the willing to be fulfilled one also requires a “purpose” or “love” of what has been willed. Thus in the Will of God we have the Will as “conceived” in the Father, as effected in the Son and as beloved in the Spirit. The Will of God being perfectly effective in the Son, and beloved in the Spirit, hence for those two reasons, it is possible for it to be internally terminated. What is important here is that contrary to our intuition, mere initiation is not the perfection or even the entirety of “will”, rather it is the will that is lovingly fulfilled which is fully descriptive of the will of God. When it comes to questions of the aseity of the Son, and selfhood, we have exactly the same approach. The ontological giving of the Father is not complete without its receiving by the Son and being loved. How do divine Persons “experience the “‘I’ of selfhood”, or whether there are “three selves”. We answer along the same lines, merely substituting “selves” for “persons”. The Father experiences the “self” as initiating agency or the divine will, the Son as effecting, the Holy Spirit as the love for, or loving content of. The Son experiences the “I” of identity in the active assertions, “I love/obey/am begotten of the Father and love/spirate the Spirit”, the Father as “I know/love/generate/spirate the Son and Spirt” or “I love the Son in the Spirit as does he love me”, and in relation to the Spirit it could be stated: “I love/obey/am spirated from the Son and the Father”.

How “Agency” in God is Different from Human Agency

Human agency is not actually a perfect form of the concept of agency nor identity. For example, we could state that a single human agent has a sense of a multiplicity of wills. We all experience this every time we will one thing, and yet a “a part of us” also does not will it. Think of someone “trying” to quit smoking or eating or drinking and so on. Remember your “inner struggle” when you say “no” to an extra portion of desert. Our language is filled with metaphors of the splits in our own personalities. We feel “torn” by hard decisions, our “heart is not in” a tedious task, and so on. We cannot will anything for ourselves whether to be or not to be, we cannot will anything that is in us that it not be or will something that is not in us (take diseases, cancers etc. in the former and perhaps a second and third pair of hands, a handsome face or larger brain in the latter).

Consider how two persons in love might find themselves completely “in-sync” with each other’s thoughts. At some point one might even be able to say that all that prevents them from actually being literally one is the boundary of their bodies. Further, any child brought forth into such a relationship can be said to experience their own personal identity precisely as the object of the love of their parents. The three can truly be said to “identify” with one another. Loving parents are self-sacrificial and would desire no more than the safety and well-being of their child, just as the the obedient young child wants no more than the happiness of their parents.

Thus we have reasons for caution when attempting to extrapolate the human notion of single-person identity equivocally to God, when we can so easily come up with an analogy where those lines are blurred and identity can seem to be shared in a group. This of course, also translates into sociological phenomena like “group identity”, and “identity politics” and so on.

God is the perfect fulfilment of his own Will

God, in contrast to human agents as we described above, is not someone that is agonizing over what to do with their life, rather God is what he Wills, there is nothing in God which he does not Will, and God Wills his Being. In God is one that Wills, one that Willed (or is the Will) and the Love for both. By this is God completely self-sufficient in the Willing, the fulfilment of that Will and its being loved- God’s will is completely fulfilled in himself. Without these three notions there could not be Will in God at all, for it would be absurd that God’s Will not be fulfilled. You see, perfect fulfilment is that which is terminated in a person rather than a thing.

Again, let us be careful to examine the semantics to avoid going round in a circle here: tri-personality makes it possible that God’s will be perfectly fulfilled. If the accusation is that God cannot be tri-personal then it is required to show just how an alternative personal fulfilment be possible, else the alternative implies atheism, rejecting the primary premise in theology “God exists”. The will of a solitary being if fulfilled tri-personally; either that or it could not will at all, leave alone find fulfilment. It is precisely because willing and fulfilment is inherent in God rather than externally predicated that he is tri-personal rather than solitary. The reason that the solitary Deity could be fulfilled is because it is not solitary in a personal sense, only entitatively.

The Son is completely obedient to the Father “my food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work” (Jn.4:34). God’s Will is perfectly effective in Jesus, and perfectly Beloved in the Holy Spirit. Agency in God being thus perfectly “effective” is therefore the same Perfect Agency in all Three Persons. The Holy Spirit, we could say is the “appreciation” of the fulfilment of the Father’s loving Will for the Son. The Father’s Will which is the Son is neither unappreciated nor ineffective. The Father is “that” which wills, the Son is “what” the Father wills and the Holy Spirit is that which it is willed “through”, which is in love. As St. Paul says: “For from him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom.11:36).

This is why God is Almighty and he is Almighty in and of Himself, rather than in anything that He is yet to fulfil: what he wills is perfectly true, and perfectly Beloved. One could say that the Father’s Will is completely realized because of the Son’s obedience, the Son is completely fulfilled because of the Father’s perfect generosity, and the Spirit is fully consummated in Love, by each perfectly. Nothing remains unattained to the Will of God or to the Persons of God.

There is no sense in which this makes the Three Persons “less” than Persons, rather it is human persons who are completely unfulfilled. The Divine Persons are almighty and completely fulfilled precisely because they are Persons in the manner of being given to each other. It therefore stands to reason that the Three Persons are more personal than any human agent, for we are still seeking “personal fulfilment”, to find it only in God.

Is there Asymmetry in Experienced Personhood? The reason I am somewhat concerned about symmetry is because of something of a dissatisfaction of arriving at (to use a human phrase) a “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to describing the divine Persons. I think I would say in reply that the manner that we have already described the Persons shows that there is not asymmetry, but rather symmetry in that all the three are really different notions. The symmetry lies in the fact that difference is maintained and thereby distinction. Asymmetry rather than being a defeater is merely an equivocation on “distinction”. This distinction when expressed as the personal experiences of the divine Persons can be described as symmetries.

If we speak of the personal experience of the Persons, in the case of knowledge, the Father experiences knowledge as conceiving it, the Son as being it, and the Spirit as loving/appreciating it or even as being its loving content, this is to give an epistemic description. In the case of love, the Father experiences it as loving, the Son as being loved, and the Spirit as being love. Thus we see a symmetry in that for each attribute there are seemingly three notions. The Father knows and loves, the Son is known and loves, the Spirit is known and is love. That is the reason that the Father is the Father: it is because every notion pertaining to him is active. The Holy Spirit is Spirit of the Father and Son precisely because every notion related to him is passive- that’s what it means to be “spirited”. Again the arguments against this fall to the semantic fallacy: For God to be tri-personal requires that there is necessarily personal relations. Now that this relation entails asymmetrical distinction cannot be an objection else God cannot be tri-personal nor exist (arguing for the relations of friendship, which would imply tritheism). In conclusion I think this is the manner in which the symmetry is resolved (assuming that it needed resolving in the first place) in that it is not a symmetry but rather an order of procession.

Answering some Trinitarian Objections

A Problem of “Identity”?

“Three Persons cannot be one Substance”?

Belief in the Holy Trinity is the belief that what is possible for God is not possible for humans, which is to be one Divine Substance possessed Tri-Personally. Consider that there is nothing physical in God that the distinctions might consist in. Any distinctions in God must either be wholly God, or God must be partitioned. This of course, is also what necessitates Divine Simplicity, which we discuss in the next article. The distinctions that we refer to in God are not substantive, that is they are not constituted by anything pertaining to the Substance of God. The difference between Father and Son is not constituted by anything pertaining to the Substance of God or a part of it. As Jesus “all that the Father has is mine”. There is no substance that the Father has which the Son does not. In order to introduce composition into a substance, it is necessary to divide it. What we are saying is that in the case of Substance of God, it is possible for there to be distinctions which are not divisions. For example, in order to introduce composition into pizza one must slice it. We are saying that there are distinctions in that pizza that do not entail slicing it. One possibility is if it were possible for the pizza to beget itself. In this case we have the pizza that begets and the pizza that is begotten, and we still only have one pizza. The distinctions are in the begetting and being begotten but not in the substance. The best analogy we have is that of the mind, which as immaterial is not divided by notions of mind, thought, love- there is seemingly nothing for it to divide. God can truly be the same intellect tri-personally- as one “intellecting”, one being “intellected”, one loving.

Human persons can be said to “share” a common “humanity”. “Common Humanity”, those characteristics that we all share is a heritage and possession of us all. Humans also share commonality with other living things and with non-living things, in fact a lot more than we sometimes care to think about. For example, we are 100% made up of non-living substance, as is every other living thing, and our DNA differs from other living things by only a few percentage points.

Humans cannot all individuate the same “humanity”, we individuate it severally, as several instances of it. There are several personal instances of humanity. Every instance of humanity must be spatially distinct, since “spatial” is an essential characteristic of “humanity”. Divinity is not spatial, so it is not required that the instances of divinity be spatially distinct. Thus we have multiple human “substances” arising from the starting point of the “common humanity”. But the Substance of God or “Divinity” cannot be several, by definition. Therefore any personal instances of it must be of the same Substance.

The Law of Identity is not Violated

Identities need to be preserved for the course of an argument, else one cannot make any arguments. This is why we have our law identity as the third law of logic. A term must preserve its meaning for the course of a proposition, else the proposition is incoherent.

The central logical argument against the trinitarian doctrine is always going to be based upon a violation of the law of identity (a is a), since that is precisely the trinitarian paradox, that it is possible for God both to be “a” as well as “b”, “c” and “d”. If we are attempting to fit the doctrine into a logical proposition, we would say that it is possible for God to have two senses of identity- a personal identity as well as entitative identity; three of the former, one of the latter (were both only one, then they would simply collapse into the same sense). This can only mean that what is means to be “Person” is different from what it means to be “Substance” with relation to God.

The problem here is that normally when we say that a thing possesses multiplicity, it indicates complexity (that it is made up of parts). The real question here is to whether it is possible for a thing to have multiplicity and for each of those multiple terms to constitute the entire entity non-competitively. The only analogy we have of this is that of the mind, which is most appropriate, since we are asserting that God is an intellectual being. However if it is indeed true that an entity can indeed possess this manner of complexity, then 3 is truly 1 in these cases. Christianity is the claim that this is possible in the case of God, and in some manner it is also possibly the case for the human intellect. Under normal circumstances, this is a problem of identity, because the three identities coincide and thereby collapse into one. To repeat: three identities that coincide entitatively, normally collapse into one identity. If Fifi, Mimi and Rover are all the same dog, then two of those identities are completely superfluous. While we admit that wholeheartedly, we state that God is not constrained to this condition, because he is qualitatively different from anything in existence.

The reason is this, as we have recently discussed: One of the properties of “humanity” is that it is spatially bound, therefore it is essential that the personal instances of it are spatially separated (or delineated) from each other. Divinity is not spatially bound. therefore personal instances of God, by definition, must also possess this property of being unbounded. This can only be possible if they coincide entitatively. This is possible because God is not just spatially unbounded, rather he is boundless existence itself. It makes every sense (as we will also iterate in the Simplicity article) that God be called existence. It would be absurd to assert he were some kind of “special stuff”. Existence is the only category that avoids all categories and yet must exist, just like God.

Some Reminiscing about identity

Contrary to what we might re-suppose, closer examination easily discloses that identity is actually in a constant state of change. A chicken can change into “chicken wings”, the mountain can change into the material for your car, the tree into a foot-bridge, various biological materials into petrol and diesel for fuel, a diamond for a ring, a grass-eating animal into shoes and clothes, and so on. Even we ourselves change over time, and there is the well-know paradox of Zeno’s Ship which aptly demonstrates the notion.

Were an identity to change during an argument, then a process must be specified. It is only human identity that we treat, from a sense of social justice and our subjective experience of agency and responsibility, as permanent. Unlike in the case of animals, there is no valid process by which human identity might be altered. Even if hypothetically a brain could be transplanted into a different body then the identity would simply go with it. However biologically speaking, this is not always the case, for upon death, whether the body is buried, cremated or cast out at sea, our identities undergo the same biological recycling as all others. Further, rational beings (and also most irrational beings) are composed of other living things namely cells and often also multi-cell entities like commensals and symbiotes.

The macro-organism merely imposes “identity” upon the micro-organisms of its structure by convention. Similarly, at the molecular and subatomic levels we have a similar hierarchy of identities where the larger substances simply impose their identities upon collections of atoms and molecules, however when those larger substances devolve, like a glass of spilt milk, those same atoms and molecules then go on to reconstitute new substantial identities and so the cycle goes on endlessly.

Constancy of human identity is a theological option found in the Abrahamic faiths where the soul preserves the identity of that which died into eternity. This is because it is the only means by which a theology of justice might be maintained, which is the feature of these religions as it is in human society. So in that society a person might change their gender, alter their face (the case of a famous criminal comes to mind), or even suffer an alteration in personality as the result of brain illness or injury and yet legally retain their identity.

In a state of dementia a person progressively loses their intellectual identity, in autistic persons they might never fully form one, while it is impossible to tell if a patient in a coma has retained his thoughts or not until and if they recover. A person with severe mental illness might have multiple identities, or might be deemed not to have the mental capacity to act as an agent at all. A depressed or suicidal person rejects their identity and “who they are”. There are now facilities to cryogenically freeze one’s brain in the hope of it being transplanted into a new body in the distant future.
Would a criminal brain reanimated in a new body have to serve out the remainder of any incomplete jail terms? Or what if it were possible to download all one’s thoughts, would the computer then share your identity? Further, constancy of identity is actually not a feature in some religious traditions. For example in reincarnation, identities can be predicated of multiple entities, and as a result are karmic penalties are transferrable to those entities also. In “spiritualisms” identities merge and “become one” with the cosmos or “universal consciousness”. Finally some like the Jehovah’s Witnesses that believe that identity can be annihilated at death and also reconstructed a second time from the memory of God at the Resurrection, a second instance of the same identity. What we see in all this is that human identity does not quite provide us with a firm bedrock by which to judge the viability of the tri-personal identity in the trinitarian doctrine.

Trinity can resolve the Logical Problem of Divine Aseity

Aseity is “to be of oneself” which when fleshed out is really “to be because of oneself”. When we describe the case of God is it natural to resort to what in logic would be a case of special pleading where we simply absolve ourselves of any need for prior causation. There is no a priori principle by which anything must exist were there nothing, were this the case then we would have nothing more to write about. To underline the point, it is precisely because of the logical problem of the Universe being its own cause that we have to posit God in the first place. But all we’re really doing is transferring the logical problem to God. Rather the argument for God’s existence is an a posteriori argument, that is, the posterior principle of the existence of creation is used as an inductive argument (inductive arguments go backwards, while deductive ones go forward from first principles). Aseity is a logical contradiction when we formulate it correctly, although it is always going to be tricky to do so. God would need to be both, “the thing that were being empowered to exist”, as well as the power that enabled it to do so, or in other words, that the cause be the same as the effect.

When we say “to exist of himself” in defining asity, “of” is a genitive which could denote that an entity that comes from (part of/begotten of) an entity, belongs to an entity (property of), or is caused by an entity (because of), “of” itself is “because-of” itself. However in the trinitarian model that causality is atemporal, that is eternal generation. The three in the Trinity are not arranged sequentially but simultaneously, therefore as triangulated and not linear anymore, as one would expect of a causal chain. With two, whichever way one places them, one falls behind the other, while with three, this is never the case. This is how loving communion works out also in a family. To describe it negatively, the possibility of uninhibited dominance in the presence of two members is balanced out by the presence of the third. It is in that third person’s interest to foster the second in order to avoid them both becoming dominated by the first. In positive terms, there are two types of love involved here: the loving regard of the first for the second, and the love that they both share for the third.

But is the Father alone A Se?

We have been asserting throughout, God is Existence itself, which is the same as to assert that he is a se. To be a se is to be existence rather than to be brought into it. That Existence or aseity is the divine Substance itself, and the Three Persons having the same Divine Essence share the same divine aseity. So although the Son is “from the Father”, yet not in the manner of something that is received into nothing pre-existing. That which is given is the same as the Giver. Thus were the Son to lack aseity, he could not be the same substance as the Father who is aseity itself. Just as we saw in the previous section on will and agency in God, so also here, the Father possesses the aseity as the one giving it, but nothing is given that is not received, or the love of and for what is given. Thus again as in the manner of will, substance and agency that is singular in God, all three possess it, but under different aspects. Of course, were it the case that the Son and the Father distinct in essence (being) then certainly the Son could not be a se. Oneness of Being is being asserted entails that aseity is not violated, or at least not in the normal intent and sense of the use of the term.

Every “Possible World” is Existence too: It is not correct in this sense to state that there is a possibility of the Son being without the Father, which is sometimes raised as an objection, based upon the assertion that “the Son is a se”. When the aseity of the Son is correctly stated it is as “the Son shares the same aseity as the Father”, if aseity is euphemistic for the Divine Substance which is Existence itself. There is no “possible world” in which the Son is without the Father, because were this so he would not be a Son. The alleged possibility has already violated the premise of Sonship which is to be from the Father.

The Category of “Relation”

We can consider another way to see that this tri-personal individuation of the Substance of God does not a priori cause actual divisions with him: Instead of saying three Persons, we can state that these distinctions in the manner of giving, being given and the love of each are three “relations” of the Substance, or that they are three manners in which the same Substance of God is “related” to itself. This means that we cannot admit of modality (that the substance merely changes appearance, which is a magical occurrence, but metaphysically it would imply difference in accidents, for example Mel Gibson stepping out in his jeans one day and in a suit the next). Remember Kierkegaard’s formula: “the self is that which relates the self to itself“. Already in the analogy of the mind we see “relation” which simply cannot be collapse into modalism, because it is preserved by relation. The notional opposition between Father and Son, like two poles of a magnet can simply not be collapsed into one.

If we take the example of a gift- whether a gift we given, received or loved, the gift is exactly the same. The gift itself does not change depending upon the manner in which it is related, it stays exactly the same gift. Obviously in the case of humans we require an actual giver, recipient etc., while in the case of God all those are the Substance of God himself. The analogy shows that the substance does not change when considered under any of  the three aspects, and also that that none of the aspects demarcates anything within the substance from the others.

If that which distinguishes one concept from another is nothing substantial, then it is not a division. Relation does not just not inhere in the substance, it pertains to the whole substance, rather than to a part of it, and is that by which the whole substance is related to the other. Relation is not that which is a demarcation in the Substance, rather it is what relates to (the whole of) the substance.

Some critics of St. Thomas have tried to state that in doing so he has made the persons not to be real but only abstract, however this is certainly not what is intended. It is merely answering the question “how can there be a distinction sans demarcation”? The answer is by that distinction not being a substantial demarcation, rather only that by which there is a substantial relation. There is not third or middle position in between modalism and tripartism than asserting that it is these relations themselves (thereby sidestepping tripartism) which are subsistent (thereby sidestepping modalism in which they are imaginary). The subsisting Son is the “relation of being the Son of/ Spirator of”; the subsisting Father is the “relation of being the Father/ Spirator of” and the subsisting Spirit is the “relation of being Spirated by”.

Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher who lived in the third century BC showed that a “relation” is neither a thing itself, nor is it a quality of a thing (neither “substance”, nor “accident” in his terminology). So for example if the “thing” we are talking about is “horse”, its qualities could be “strong”, “old”, “brown”, etc. which describe it. However its “relations” are things like “on the meadow”, “in from of the barn”, “owned by Mr. Jones” etc. It can be seen that these are neither the horse itself, nor an inherent quality of it, and yet they undoubtedly still say something that pertains to that horse specifically.

In Trinitarian doctrine, we state that God has “relations” of “Father, Son, Spirit”. These again then, do not demarcate any part of the Substance of God as a quality separate from other parts. Thus in saying “Father”, for example, we are not demarcating any inherent quality or portion of the Father as separate from a quality inherent in “Son” or “Spirit”. As St. Thomas puts it: “…there must be real distinction in God, not, indeed, according to that which is absolute—namely, essence, wherein there is supreme unity and simplicity—but according to that which is relative.” [STIII Q.28] There is no substantial (“absolute”) distinction between the Persons, under this aspect they are perfectly one. No distinction is to be found under this aspect.

“Relation” rather than a quality of a thing is “that which relates a thing to another”. . Dr. Matthew Minerd in an interview states that the explanation of the Relations of the Persons of God, is “difficult metaphysics, even the “end of metaphysics” and even seemingly “at the very edge of being and non-being…”. I state this only to show that if the reader is finding this rather mind-bending, it is only because it is. Relation only deals with the “towardness” of one thing to another.  St. Thomas describes relations that are not even real but only “in the mind” like that between genus (eg. dog) and species (eg. dachshund). Later Scholastic theologians call this as its aditas/ad esse “to be toward” which is different from its “in esse” (being in/within).

The notion of relation can be purified to denote simply a “towardness” and nothing else. “Relation” is in opposition or contrast to something purely in terms of its “towardness”. Thus between “Father”, “Son” and “Holy Spirit”, there is not implied any essential or substantial “opposition”, only relational. The Father and the Son share the Same Godhead, but not the same Relation- The Father is not the Son of the Father, rather he is the Father of the Son, and so on for all the three Persons. As human beings, it is quite natural for us to assume there to be a “substantial” distinction between related objects, because we necessarily think in those terms which involve spatial separation. So human fatherhood and sonship require spatial demarcation in physical substances, but what demarcation can we speak of in a non-spatial entity? Thus in God “Relation” of Substance cannot necessitate spatial demarcation when there is no space to be demarcated.

All substances have in a very real sense, a “dual nature”: Human beings cannot be the same body, since the property of a body is to be demarcated from other bodies. The common “humanity” that we all share consists in all the generic bodily parts that are somewhat common to all humans and lack particular individuality in a sense, which that which distinguishes between persons are the unique characters that are individual to us, and confer “identity”. It is part of our undeniable common “humanity”, and of the traits of this common humanity that we all share to possess the attribute of being spatially demarcated. That which distinguishes us as persons is not spatial demarcation since that is what we all share. So also in God, the quality of “divinity” does not include any spatial demarcation (it is not one of the attributes of divinity). Distinction between divine Persons in this case, does not include any such demarcation which is not an attribute of God in the first place. God has a “dual nature” in the sense of being one in the first sense, and three in a “second” sense. The second sense cannot “divide” the first because such a state of affairs is not one of its definitional attributes. It can only be true of the first in a sense that does not include any division.

St Thomas states [SCG Bk.4 Ch.11, para.12]: “A nature…which is one in species, is not divided into a numerical “many” except by reason of matter. But the divine nature is entirely immaterial. It is, therefore, impossible that the divine nature be specifically one and numerically different. The Word of God, therefore, has a nature in common with God and has it with numerical identity. For this reason the Word of God and the God whose Word He is are not two gods, but one God.”

The Cappadocian Fathers who were involved in the Council of Constantinople put it thus, in the words of JND Kelly:

“To explain how the one substance can be simultaneously present in three Persons they appeal to the analogy of a universal and its particulars. ‘Ousia and hupostasis ‘, writes Basil, ‘are differentiated exactly as universal () and particular () are, e.g. animal and particular man.’ From this point of view each of the divine hypostases is the ousia or essence of Godhead determined by its appropriate particularizing characteristic (), or identifying peculiarity (), just as each individual man represents the universal ‘man’ determined by certain characteristics which mark him off from other men. For Basils these particularizing characteristics are respectively ‘paternity’ (), ‘sonship’ (), and ‘sanctifying power’ or sanctification’ (). The other Cappadocians define them more precisely as ‘ingenerateness'(), ‘generateness’ (), and ‘mission’ or ‘procession’ ()(…)Thus the distinction of the Persons is grounded in Their origin and mutual relation (…)

Their theory is that the unity of the ousia, or Godhead, follows from the unity of the divine action () which is disclosed in revelation. ‘If we observe’, writes Gregory of Nyssa, ‘a single activity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in no respect different in the case of any, we are obliged to infer unity of nature () from the identity of activity; for Father, Son and Holy Spirit cooperate in sanctifying, quickening, consoling and so on.’” (Kelly Doctrines of the Early Church 265,66)

When viewed in this manner it is possible to assert that the distinctions in God are not terms of division in Him.

“His (Augustine’s) motive in formulating it was to escape a cunning dilemma (callidissimum machinamentum) posed by Arian critics. Basing themselves on the Aristotelian scheme of categories, they contended that the distinctions within the Godhead, if they existed, must be classified under the category either of substance or of accident. The latter was out of the question, God having no accidents; the former led to the conclusion that the Three are independent substances. Augustine rejects both alternatives, pointing out that the concept of relation (ad aliquid relatio) still remains. The Three, he goes on to claim, are relations, as real and eternal as the factors of begetting, being begotten and proceeding (or being bestowed} within the Godhead which give rise to them. Father, Son and Spirit are thus relations in the sense that whatever each of Them is, He is in relation to one or both of the others…” (JND Kelly, 274)

Creation, Reality and Redemption

When this plays out in relation to us, we can see this activity as creation and redemption. Fr. Thomas White, OP writes:

“the Spirit accomplishes the saving work of God, and he does so in concord with the saving activity of the Lord Jesus. God alone can save us, but according to Paul it is the Father who saves us through the activity of the Son and the Spirit. Therefore the Son and the Spirit each partake truly of the activity of God. We see again the close connection between God (the Father), the Lord Jesus, and the work of the Holy Spirit in 2 Thess.2:13 where the role of the Spirit in the sanctification of believers is especially emphasized by Paul: “But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord (Jesus), because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” The Son and the Spirit perform salvific acts proper to God conjointly with the Father. Fourth, Paul indicates that the Son, too, plays a role in the sending of the Spirit. He does this especially insofar as he maintains that the Spirit the Father sends is the Spirit of his Son (in italics). Accordingly, we see the close connection between Christ and the mission of the Spirit in Gal.4:6: “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba, Father””. Thus for St. Paul, the Spirit of God who is sent is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son. In Rom.8:9-10, St. Paul reiterates his emphasis that the Spirit is Christ’s own Spirit “…” (93, TNM)

God’s thought itself is substantive, this is the central mystery of God. It also tells us why when God creates, He required no intermediary substance, so also when God wills, his Will is fruition itself, it being substantive, not “imagined”. Human beings imagine what they want, God imagines reality. God is perfect action, and all God’s thought is  realised. In creating, God does not create a new reality within his Substance, rather he “thinks” a reality outside his Substance. God is not undecided like we are, requiring to consider several defective options before arriving at the right one. Rather, all God’s options are “option A”. The Word itself is truth and reality: “your word Lord, is truth” (John 17:17). All human willing and knowing is merely wishful thinking and altogether ineffective, for a human’s thoughts are not creation, and therefore untrue and altogether imaginary. But in Jesus’s miracles, for example, his Word is true, when he says “healed”, that is true in relation to the disease; or when he says “rise” that is true in relation to what is dead.  

And if understanding is effective, who more than she is fashioner of what exists?

… In kinship with wisdom  There is immortality

But I perceived that I would not possess wisdom unless God gave her to me

-And it was a mark of insight to know whose gift she was

Wisdom 8:6,17,21

Reality obviously did not precede God, so rather God is reality and constitutes reality exclusively and entirely. There are unnumbered postulated gods, unnumbered ways of postulating gods and of all of those the one God is Reality itself, the others unreal. That reality of God is the pure act of the Divine Persons in Love “the act of existing lies at the very heart, or if one prefers at the very root of the real. It is therefore the principle of the principles of reality. (It is) First absolutely (…) what is most perfect is the act-of-being (ipsum esse) “since it is related to all things as their act.” (Gilson, 34 CPTA)

Thought is the ability to consider things rather than to be a thing. Thus we can define, if it an be accepted, the only known immaterial thing known to man. Thought cannot be defined in terms of scientific data and research, rather thought is itself what researches and analyses. Thus an action that does not consist in the movement of a thing and is yet a movement because it is an act, must necessarily be a movement in thought. That immaterial principle has no material which it might use in order to create. The very thought of that Entity, if it the thought of a material thing, would be a thing, and a thing could only be because it had been thought. “And God said, “Let there be Light”, and there was light…” (Genesis 1:3).

There must be “act” at the heart of existence, or it would need to be caused to act by some other that was at the heart. There are two kinds of acts: those that build up and those that break down, and if the one acting has intellect and therefore intention, then their act is either loving or hateful. However a hateful act could only utilise the other or if none other, then utilize itself, for what else is the nature of hate, or what else can be hated but the self when there is none to hate? Reality is the act of love, Love is the only true reality, what is evil is unreal and lacks any ontological integrity. This is in the Christian tradition the communion of love of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Love is engendered in creation by a God who is necessarily real, and creates unecessarily, therefore unselfishly and lovingly.

When God, whose act of existence is reality and truth itself speaks a material, that material is truth because it is spoken by Truth itself. It is real because it is spoken by the Real. When God speaks Creation, that event is Creation, for act and reality coincide, there is no “material cause” required for God, and therefore no middle term in Creation  “for in him all things…were created…all things have been created through him and for him…in him all things hold together…”(Col 1:16-18).

Just as the Word proceeds from the Father internally in the Trinity, when the Word proceeds externally, this constitutes a creative activity in and through and by that word. The Trinitarian creation is most powerfully brought by St Paul when he says (1 Cor 8:6) “…yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” “Through” that Word existence is brought forth and maintained, as “for” him it is redeemed.

According to St Thomas, “The eternal procession of persons is the cause and reason of the production of creatures” (1 Sent. d.14 q.1 art.1). It is said he discovered this theological thesis both in the works of his master St Albert the Great and in the writings of St Bonaventure: the “extrinsic diffusion” of the good (creation) has as its reason the “intrinsic diffusion” of the sovereign Good in the divine persons, in the way in which that which is first is the cause of all secondary realities that are derived from it”.

Commenting on 1 Sent.d.26 q.2 art.2 ad.2 Giles Emery says in the Christian Philosophy of Aquinas: “…the distinction of divine persons, if one looks at it under the aspect of quantity, is the smallest of all real distinctions (…) Relation as the reality having the least degree of being, since relation does not constitute a determination which would intrinsically modify the subject…but if one considers them under the aspect of dignity and causality, distinction and relation in the Trinity surpass all other relations…by the fact that it is a divine relation…thus creation finds its source in the Trinitarian distinction and relations…a world really distinct from God, and in this sense creation is distinction (…) “As the principle of distinction…personal relation appears as the ultimate source of creation and all the plurality in the world (…) in this way, Saint Thomas maintains a strict monotheism (a single action of the entire Trinity) while taking into account the personal mode of action of each hypostasis and while emphasizing the order of the persons. This teaching reveals a profound personalism in the treatment of Trinitarian action. Without weakening the truth of the unity of action of operation of the three persons, one must hold together two complementary rules: the common efficacy of the trinity, and the causality of the Trinitarian processions.”

These explanations clearly show the personal mode of creative action: it is by reason of his personal Word and of his personal Love that the Father creates. This “personalism” of the doctrine of creation is necessary to understand the reality of redemption: we are saved by the persons who have created us, and we are conducted to the Father (reditus) by the Persons who are also the reason of creation (exitus). “…Just as the mode of existence of the person is relational, in the mode of action of the person is relational, in conformity with the mode of existence. For this reason, creative and redemptive action is common to the entire Trinity (shared efficacy), but in this common action each person is involved according to his personal mode, that is, according to his proper relational mode.”  Of course, we shall have much to say about the mode of action of the Son in our Salvation.