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The Historic Doctrine of the Trinity: Difference between revisions
→What does "person" mean
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=What does "person" mean= | =What does "person" mean= | ||
We have been asked the | We have been asked the question: God in 3 persons? What is the definition of a person? What is this concept all about? | ||
:What is the meaning of “person” in the orthodox representation of the Trinity? Etymologically, the word is from the Latin persona, from per, “through,” and sono, “speak,” hence, “speak through” and thus the “mask” through which the Roman actor spoke, and hence the specific “character” he portrayed. The word, it is true, does not appear in the Nicene Creed per se. But it is the word with a history of doctrinal usage that went back as far as Tertullian and which eventually came to be universally used by the church to designate the Three Selves in the One God and to distinguish them from the one divine essence which each is as God. | :What is the meaning of “person” in the orthodox representation of the Trinity? Etymologically, the word is from the Latin persona, from per, “through,” and sono, “speak,” hence, “speak through” and thus the “mask” through which the Roman actor spoke, and hence the specific “character” he portrayed. The word, it is true, does not appear in the Nicene Creed per se. But it is the word with a history of doctrinal usage that went back as far as Tertullian and which eventually came to be universally used by the church to designate the Three Selves in the One God and to distinguish them from the one divine essence which each is as God. | ||
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::'''''I could wish they [that is, the Greek words, ὁμοούσια, homoousia, οὔσια, ousia, πρόσωπον, prosōpon, and the Latin substantia, persona] were buried, if only among all men this faith were agreed on: that Father and Son and Spirit are one God, yet the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that they are differentiated by a peculiar quality.'''''<ref>Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 319-20 (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1998).</ref> | ::'''''I could wish they [that is, the Greek words, ὁμοούσια, homoousia, οὔσια, ousia, πρόσωπον, prosōpon, and the Latin substantia, persona] were buried, if only among all men this faith were agreed on: that Father and Son and Spirit are one God, yet the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that they are differentiated by a peculiar quality.'''''<ref>Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 319-20 (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1998).</ref> | ||
If William Branham had taken this whole question seriously, he would have learned the following: | |||
==The historical problem with trying to describe God== | ==The historical problem with trying to describe God== | ||