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The Historic Doctrine of the Trinity: Difference between revisions
→But... there is no better term at present
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You can see from the following discussion, that for centuries people have wrestled with the difficulty of trying to describe God: | You can see from the following discussion by John McIntyre, that for centuries people have wrestled with the difficulty of trying to describe God: | ||
:The original words for the nature of being of Godhead—essence (essentia or ousia) and substance (substantia) are straightforward enough. On the contrary, the originals for ‘person’ underwent considerable revision. Of the adoption of the word persona by the Latins, Augustine said that they did so ‘since '''they could not discover any more suitable method to describe that which they could understand without words'''’ (De Trinitate, V. 10). The Greeks seemed to have difficulty in establishing the most acceptable term for the object designated by the Latin persona, which is not quite equivalent to ‘person’ or ‘personality’ in our sense of the words. The exact translation (at least of one of its senses), namely, prosopon, means ‘a mask’, ‘an aspect’. Since, however, the word had been employed by the Sabellians in their unacceptable view of the Trinity—that the same one person, God, is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as it were in sequence, showing one aspect when creating, another aspect when redeeming, and a third when sanctifying, these external aspects reflecting no eternal distinctions immanent in the Godhead—it was rejected. So the Greeks chose hypostasis, which was by no means initially a simple or obvious choice; for hypostasis itself has two connotations—the one, strictly etymological and signifying ‘substance’ and so apparently equivalent to substantia or ousia, eventually fell out of use in trinitarian theology; and the other has traditionally been translated as ‘person’. In the history of trinitarianism, persona was equated with tropos hyparxeos, and with the Latin subsistentia in divina essentia.<ref>John McIntyre, The Shape of Pneumatology : Studies in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 76-77 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004).</ref> | :The original words for the nature of being of Godhead—essence (essentia or ousia) and substance (substantia) are straightforward enough. On the contrary, the originals for ‘person’ underwent considerable revision. Of the adoption of the word persona by the Latins, Augustine said that they did so ‘since '''they could not discover any more suitable method to describe that which they could understand without words'''’ (De Trinitate, V. 10). The Greeks seemed to have difficulty in establishing the most acceptable term for the object designated by the Latin persona, which is not quite equivalent to ‘person’ or ‘personality’ in our sense of the words. The exact translation (at least of one of its senses), namely, prosopon, means ‘a mask’, ‘an aspect’. Since, however, the word had been employed by the Sabellians in their unacceptable view of the Trinity—that the same one person, God, is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as it were in sequence, showing one aspect when creating, another aspect when redeeming, and a third when sanctifying, these external aspects reflecting no eternal distinctions immanent in the Godhead—it was rejected. So the Greeks chose hypostasis, which was by no means initially a simple or obvious choice; for hypostasis itself has two connotations—the one, strictly etymological and signifying ‘substance’ and so apparently equivalent to substantia or ousia, eventually fell out of use in trinitarian theology; and the other has traditionally been translated as ‘person’. In the history of trinitarianism, persona was equated with tropos hyparxeos, and with the Latin subsistentia in divina essentia.<ref>John McIntyre, The Shape of Pneumatology : Studies in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 76-77 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004).</ref> | ||
=="Person" does not mean "Individual"== | =="Person" does not mean "Individual"== | ||
Maclean in the ''Dictionary of the Apostolic Church'' states the following: | |||
:The words which we render ‘Person’ (ὑπόστασις, πρόσωπον, persona) are of a still later date, and at first exhibited a remarkable fluidity of signification. Thus ὑπόστασις was used at one time to denote what is common to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what we should call the Divine ‘substance,’ at another it was used to distinguish between the Three; so that in one sense there is one ὑπόστασις in the Holy Trinity, in the other there are three. With regard to the word ‘Person,’ the student must necessarily be always on his guard against the supposition that ‘Person’ means ‘individual,’ as when we say that three different men are three ‘persons’; or that ‘Trinity’ involves tritheism, or three Gods. These technical expressions are but methods of denoting the teaching found in the New Testament that there are distinctions in the Godhead, and that, while God is One, yet He is not a mere Monad. These technical terms are not found in the apostolic or sub-apostolic writers; with regard to the second of them, it may be remembered that the idea of personality was hardly formulated in any sense till shortly before the Christian era; and its application to theology came in a good deal later.<ref>A. J. Maclean, "God", in , vol. 1, Dictionary of the Apostolic Church (2 Vols.), ed. James Hastings, 460 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916-1918)</ref> | :The words which we render ‘Person’ (ὑπόστασις, πρόσωπον, persona) are of a still later date, and at first exhibited a remarkable fluidity of signification. Thus ὑπόστασις was used at one time to denote what is common to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what we should call the Divine ‘substance,’ at another it was used to distinguish between the Three; so that in one sense there is one ὑπόστασις in the Holy Trinity, in the other there are three. With regard to the word ‘Person,’ the student must necessarily be always on his guard against the supposition that ‘Person’ means ‘individual,’ as when we say that three different men are three ‘persons’; or that ‘Trinity’ involves tritheism, or three Gods. These technical expressions are but methods of denoting the teaching found in the New Testament that there are distinctions in the Godhead, and that, while God is One, yet He is not a mere Monad. These technical terms are not found in the apostolic or sub-apostolic writers; with regard to the second of them, it may be remembered that the idea of personality was hardly formulated in any sense till shortly before the Christian era; and its application to theology came in a good deal later.<ref>A. J. Maclean, "God", in , vol. 1, Dictionary of the Apostolic Church (2 Vols.), ed. James Hastings, 460 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916-1918)</ref> | ||
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==But... there is no better term at present== | ==But... there is no better term at present== | ||
Carl Henry explains that the reason the "threeness" of God has been expressed as "God in 3 persons" is that there is really no better simple explanation: | |||
:There is little doubt that the formula “one essence, three persons” creates problems, but any alternative formulation only multiplies the difficulties. Augustine was dissatisfied with the term persona but found no preferable alternative: “We say … three persons, not that we would say this, but that we would not be silent” (De Trinitate, V, 9); “… not because Scripture does so, but because Scripture does not forbid” (VII, 4). | :There is little doubt that the formula “one essence, three persons” creates problems, but any alternative formulation only multiplies the difficulties. Augustine was dissatisfied with the term persona but found no preferable alternative: “We say … three persons, not that we would say this, but that we would not be silent” (De Trinitate, V, 9); “… not because Scripture does so, but because Scripture does not forbid” (VII, 4). | ||