Sect. 109The Trinity a Mystery but Not a ContradictionThe Trinity a Mystery but Not a Contradiction

I. We have shown (in § 57) that the real existence of the Three Persons in one God cannot be demonstrated by created reason. From this it follows that our conceptions of the Trinity of Persons can be but analogical and imperfect, and even more obscure and imperfect than our conceptions of the Divine Essence and Nature. It is, consequently, a matter of course that our reason should find it always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to comprehend the possibility of the several Divine attributes and of their coexistence in God. However, correct and accurate conceptions of the analogical notions enable us not only to see the necessary connection between several attributes, but also to show that no evident contradiction exists between them. Most of the contradictions which the Arians, the Socinians, and the modern Rationalists pretend to detect in the mystery of the Trinity, present hardly any difficulty, because they are based either upon misrepresentation or misconception of the dogma.

Our modern Rationalists are far more superficial than their predecessors. They think they raise a serious objection when they say that one cannot be equal to three! As if the dogma stated that one God is three Gods or one Person three Persons! Most of the difficulties of detail may be met by an accurate statement of the dogma, such as we have been attempting to give. We only touch here upon the chief difficulties which may still remain.

II. These difficulties are in reality but two—viz. (1) the real distinction of the Persons, notwithstanding their identity with one and the same absolutely simple Essence; and (2) their perfect equality in every perfection, notwithstanding the origin of one Person from another. The first difficulty rests on the axiom: Things identical with the same thing are identical with each other; and the second on the principle that origin implies inferiority.

1. The first difficulty is solved thus: Although Person and Essence in God are “One Supreme Thing, altogether simple,” still, Person and Essence no more represent the same side of this “Supreme Thing” than cognition and volition. “Person” is the Supreme Thing as possessing itself; “Essence” is It as object of possession. Hence it is not absolutely inconceivable that a substance as wealthy as the Divine should possess Itself in several ways; and if so, It must also be able to manifest Itself in several Possessors, Who, as such, are no more identical among Themselves than the forms of possession are identical. If, further, each Person is identical with the Essence, He is only identical as a special form of possession of the Essence, and thus, from the axiom, “Things which are identical with the same thing are identical with each other,” it only follows that They all possess the same Essence through identity with the same; and not that They are also identical in the form of possession.

2. The second difficulty is solved thus: An origin in God is the result, not of an accidental, but of an essential act—that is, of an act identical with its principle as well as with the Divine Essence, and essential to both principle and Essence; but this being admitted, it is not at all evident that the produced possession ought not to be likewise essential, but merely accidental, or merely by connection and not by identity with the Divine Essence. Moreover, the communication of the Nature by the Father does not result from a power and wealth founded on His personality, but from the power of the common Nature, which essentially tends to subsist not in one but in three Persons, and manifests this power equally in the Three Persons, although in a different form in each.