The Terminology of the Trinity
Himself, to think, to objectify. However, the content of that thought cannot be a thought as with humans but must be reality. Therefore,
God brings forth thinking Himself, objectifies Himself, in the world, which is the true Son of God, and then returns from this selfalienation through the consciousness of humanity back to Himself in the Spirit.
The significant difference between this speculation and the church's doctrine of the Trinity was recognized by Strauss. Nevertheless, many still take pleasure in such philosophical constructions. Others content themselves with distinguishing three potencies, moments, forces in the one Personality of God, and thus come to recognize a revelation trinity of God in nature (creation), history (Christ), and conscience (church). Averse to metaphysics, which they consider worthless and even harmful for the life of faith, they refuse to conclude from God's self-revelation in Christ and His selfcommunication in the Holy Spirit to immanent, ontological relations in the Divine Being. They neglect the theological elements, which are undoubtedly contained not only in the church but also in Scripture, and try to present these as useless speculation.
The Terminology of the Trinity From the very beginning, the Christian church followed a different path. The doctrine of the Trinity was, for it, the dogma and therefore the mystery par excellence. The essence of Christianity, the absolute self-revelation of God in the person of Christ and the absolute selfcommunication of God in the Holy Spirit, could only be upheld if it had its foundation and principium in the ontological Trinity. As soon as the data that Holy Scripture offered for this purpose became the
object of theological thought, there arose an immediate need for all sorts of names and expressions that did not occur in Holy Scripture but proved indispensable for expressing the truth to some extent, albeit imperfectly, and for defending it against misunderstanding and opposition. The Arians and many later movements, such as the Socinians, the Anabaptists, the Remonstrants, the biblical theologians, etc., disapprove of the use of such unscriptural names.
But Christian theology has always defended their right and their value. After all, the Scripture was not given to us merely to be repeated but to be pondered and expressed in our own language;
Jesus and the apostles used it and derived further conclusions from it through reasoning; the Scripture is not a legal code or a systematic theology but the principium of theology; as the Word of God, it binds us not only in its literal words but also in what is legitimately deduced from it. Moreover, no reflection on the truth of Scripture and therefore no theological activity is possible without using such words that do not occur in Scripture. Not only in the doctrine of the Trinity but also in every other dogma and in the entire field of theology, expressions and terms are used that are not found in Scripture. With these names, therefore, the autonomy of the Christian, the right of theology, is involved. And finally, these do not serve to introduce new dogmas outside of Scripture or in conflict with it but precisely to maintain the truth of Scripture against heresy.
They have much more negative than positive significance. They indicate the lines within which Christian thought must move in order not to lose the truth of revelation at the hands of heresy. Under the guise of scripturalness, biblical theology has always drifted further from the Scripture, and with its non-biblical terms, ecclesiastical orthodoxy has always been justified in its scriptural character. Thus, gradually, various unusual names also appeared in the doctrine of the Trinity, such as homoousios, ousia, hyparxis, hypostasis, prosopon, gennesis, trias, trinitas, substantia, personae, nomina,
gradus, species, formae, proprietates, etc. However, the meaning of these terms was by no means fixed at first. The word ousia was commonly used for the one essence of God but was still often used by Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa to refer to the three Persons in that one essence. Athanasius explicitly defended himself against Sabellianism by naming the Son not monoousios but homoousios with the Father. Similarly, the word hypostasis was sometimes used of the essence and sometimes of the three Persons, so it was said that there was only one and then again that there were three hypostases in God. But Sabellianism saw the Persons only as forms of revelation of the one essence. In contrast, the church had to emphasize that those Persons were indeed existing substances in the Divine Being.
And for this purpose, the name hypostasis was used. Basil in his letter peri ousias kai hypostaseos brought more uniformity to this by designating the essence of God with ousia and the three Persons with hypostasis or prosopon; thus, each hypostasis has its own existence, idia hyparxis, is subsistent, and is distinguished from the others by idiothtes, idiwmata, idiazonta, shmeia, idia gnwrismata, charakthres, morfai. And the usage of the two Gregories, John of Damascus, and the Greek theology and church adheres to this.
In the West, the confusion was not as great. Through Tertullian, the term essentia or substantia was established for the Essence, and the name persona or subsistentia for the Persons. Later church teachers and symbols adopted this terminology. Hilary, in his work on the Trinity, speaks constantly of una essentia, substantia, natura, genus, and of tres personae, which are distinguished from one another by their proprieties. Augustine disapproved of using the Greek hypostasis translated as substantia. Substantia and essentia could not be distinguished in Latin as hypostasis and ousia could in Greek.
One could not speak in Latin of una essentia and tres substantiae.
Rather, substantia was equivalent to the Greek ousia, and essentia
always sounded strange and unusual in Latin ears. Latin, therefore, retained the expression una substantia and tres personae. However,
Augustine preferred to avoid the word substantia altogether, both for the Essence and for the Persons. Because in Latin, substantia, as distinct from accidens, indicated the bearer of attributes as existing in itself. Since this opposition cannot apply to God, where Essence and attributes are one, Augustine considered it better to refer to the Divine Essence as essentia. Just as in the East it was necessary to emphasize the self-subsistence, the hypostasis, of the three Persons in the face of Sabellianism, so the Latins, in opposition to Arianism, insisted that the three Persons were not three substantiae but three personae. Scholasticism further elaborated this terminology and provided a fixed schema that was later universally adopted, even in Reformation theology. In God, there is one Essence, una essentia, unitas naturae, and three Persons, tres personae, trinitas personarum. These three Persons are one in that Essence, homoousioi, coessential, and exist reciprocally in one another
(perichoresis personarum). But they are distinct. For there are in God two emanations: per modum naturae and per modum voluntatis; three hypostases: Father, Son, Holy Spirit; four relations: paternity, filiation, active and passive spiration; five notions: innascibility, paternity, filiation, active and passive spiration; three personal properties: Father, who is unbegotten, Son, who is begotten, Holy Spirit, who proceeds.
To understand the doctrine of the Trinity properly, three questions must be answered: What does the word essence signify? What is denoted by the word person? And what is the relationship between essence and person and among the persons themselves? As for the concept of essence, Aristotle defined ousia as a substance, h mhte kay upokeimenon tinov legetai mhte en ipokeimenw tini estin, such as a human or a horse. And so the word was first used in theology
and applied to the three Persons as well as to the one Essence. But gradually ousia came to be used in a different sense and became the designation for the Essence, the nature, the essence of a thing, which Aristotle called to ti hn einai. Thus, it became synonymous with fusis.
Some consider this word, because it is derived from funai, like natura from nasci, less suitable for denoting the Divine Essence. But this word was nevertheless adopted in theology, as was the word natura, and found support in 2 Peter 1:4. Ousia, fusis, substantia, essentia, natura became the constant name for the one Divine Essence,
Godhead in general, apart from its subsistence and its modes of subsistence, therefore, for the Divine nature, as it is common to all three Persons. This Divine Essence is one and simple, essentially distinct from all creatures and possessing all those attributes that have been discussed earlier.
The distinction between this essence and the three Persons in God finds its analogy in creatures. In them, we distinguish between the essence and the individuals. Paul, John, Peter, all share the same human nature but are distinguished as persons from the essence and from each other. However, there are immediately two dangers here.
Nominalism views the essence, the universal, merely as a name, a concept, and thus falls into tritheism in the doctrine of the Trinity; excessive realism, on the other hand, imagines the essence as a substance standing behind and above the persons, leading to tetradism or Sabellianism. Even Gregory of Nyssa did not entirely overcome this exaggerated realism. To argue that the Godhead is one and should not be spoken of as three Gods, he denied the applicability of number even to finite creatures. According to him, it was an abuse to speak in the plural of those who share one nature and thus to speak of many humans. However, in doing so, the distinction between the Essence in God and in creatures is overlooked. There is undoubtedly an analogy, and because of that
analogy, we may also speak of His Essence in God. But that analogy presupposes a very important difference. The concept of human essence is a kind of concept; human nature does have real existence and is not a mere verbal sound; it is present, not outside and above humans, but in each human. Yet it exists in each human in its own finite way; humans, like the gods in polytheism, are indeed alike
(omoi-) but not identical (omoor monoousioi). Human nature is not the same (tota en numero eadem) in different humans, and humans are therefore not only distinct but also divided. In God, however, everything is different. The Divine nature cannot be conceived as an abstract kind of concept, nor as a substance outside, above, or behind the Persons; it exists in the Persons and in each of them completely and identically (tota en numero eadem). The Persons are thus distinct but not divided. They are alike, of the same essence. They are not separated by place or time or anything else.
They all possess the same Divine nature and perfections. It is one and the same Godhead that exists in the three Persons, in all and in each specifically, so that in God there is only one Eternal, one
Almighty, one Omniscient, one God with one understanding, one will, one power. The word Essence thus maintains the truth of the Unity of God, which is constantly emphasized in Scripture, implicit in monotheism, and defended by unitarianism.
Whatever distinctions may exist in the Divine Essence, they may not and cannot detract from the unity of nature. For in God, Unity is not deficient and limited but perfect and absolute. Among creatures, all diversity inherently involves more or less separation and division.
Everything that is a creature necessarily exists in the forms of space and time and thus alongside and after each other. But eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, goodness, etc., by their very nature, exclude all separation and division. God is absolute Unity and simplicity, without composition or division, and that Unity is not ethical, not contractual in nature, as among humans, but absolute,
and therefore not an accident to the essence, but one with the Essence of God Himself.
But now, the glory of the confession of the Trinity lies precisely in this, that this Unity, however absolute, includes diversity, not excluding it. The Essence of God is not an abstract Unity, not a detached concept, but a fullness of Being, an infinite richness of life that unfolds the highest unity in diversity. These self-distinctions, which Holy Scripture reveals to us under the Name of Father, Son, and Spirit in the Divine Essence, are indicated in theology by the term Person. In the East, the term used was first prosopon, corresponding to the Hebrew "panim," meaning face, outward appearance, role.
But this word was susceptible to misunderstanding; Sabellius said that the one Divine ousia or hypostasis assumed different prosopa. In opposition to this, the church fathers argued that the three prosopa in the Divine Essence were not just appearances, manifestations, but that they were prosopa en hypostasei, that they existed and were hypostases. Thus, the word prosopon was replaced by hypostasis, which first means foundation, basis, firmness, and then denotes what is real and not merely apparent, or also what exists in itself as opposed to accidents inhering in something else. In Latin, the word used was persona, which originally indicated the mask, then the role of an actor, then the condition, quality, status in which someone appears, and thus in legal language indicated the right to stand in court. This concept was also quite fluid, and in Tertullian it alternates with various other words, nomen, species, forma, gradus, res. Nevertheless, this word remained in Latin, even when in the East prosopon had already been replaced by hypostasis; for there was no suitable Latin word for hypostasis; substantia could not be used because it was already in use for essence. But this difference in expression repeatedly led to misunderstandings between the East and the West. The Greeks
thought of the Latin persona in terms of their word prosopon, and the Latins understood the Greek hypostasis in the sense of their substantia. Each side accused the other of linguistic poverty.
Nevertheless, they learned essentially the same thing, namely, that the three Persons were not modes but substances. Thus, the word prosopon, persona in ecclesiastical language, acquired as its essential characteristic the concept of self-subsistence, hypostasis, subsistence, suppositum. This meaning of hypostasis persisted even in Athanasius and the Cappadocians. But later, the word persona acquired another characteristic. If persona indicated nothing but hypostasis, self-subsistence, over against accident, then it could also be used for things. In the christological struggle, faced with Nestorianism and Monophysitism, there was a need for sharper definition of nature and person; and thus, in the definition of persona as "the individual substance of a rational nature," attributed to Boethius, the word acquired the meaning of self-subsistence and rationality or self-consciousness. This meaning persisted in scholasticism and also in the older Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed dogmatics.
In modern philosophy and psychology, a completely different conception of personality emerged. First of all, the opinion began to prevail that personality can only be the mode of existence of a finite and limited being, and therefore there can be no question of personality, and consequently of self-consciousness and selfdetermination, in God. If God exists, He is nothing other than the Almighty, Omnipresent, unconscious force and impulse in all things.
Secondly, in psychology, it was thought that personality in humans hardly includes independent existence at all; egoity, the soul, is not a substance, but merely the nominalistic summary of psychic phenomena, and what is called personality is only the temporary passing form of existence of the individual being called human.
Thirdly, it was deduced from this that personality, as the blossom and highest development of human beings, was the ultimate goal for which humans should strive, the highest good that they could acquire for a time. "The highest happiness of earthly children is only personality" (Goethe). Fourthly, this brought about a cult of heroes and deification of humans with regard to those who had reached such a pinnacle of development and had formed themselves into a personality. For some, this also connected with the hope that such individuals, who have elevated themselves to this height of personality here or hereafter, will also continue to exist eternally
(conditional immortality). Now, this concept of personality does not apply to humans, because personality, egoity, is something different and more than the summary of psychic phenomena. But it is even less applicable in the doctrine of the Trinity. Here, person has its own meaning. Even Boethius's definition fits much more into the doctrine of Christ than into that of the Trinity. This has always been felt by the most solid theologians. Richard of St. Victor opposed this definition because it spoke of individua substantia and therefore defined person as divinae naturae incommunicabilis existentia.
Calvin only spoke of subsistentia in Dei essentia. All recognized the truth of Augustine's words: "we speak of persons, not that it should be said, but lest it should be passed over." In the doctrine of the Trinity, person signifies nothing other than that the three Persons in the Divine Being are not modes but exist in their own way. Even the emphasis on the rational and self-conscious in this concept is absolutely not paramount; for this naturally follows from the fact that they share the same Essence and all virtues, thus also knowledge and wisdom. However, what the word person expresses is that the Unity of the Divine Being unfolds in a threefold existence. It is a unity deriving trinity from itself. The Persons are not three modes of revelation of the one Divine Personality, but the Divine Being exists no differently than as Tri-Personal, precisely because they are
absolute, Divine Personalities. In humans, we have only a weak analogy of this. Personality in humans is only established because there is a subject that sets itself as an object over against itself and summarizes itself with itself; three moments constitute the essence of human personality, but in us they are only moments; in God, because there is no time or space, no extension or division in Him, they are three hypostases, three ways of existence of the one and the same Essence. However, this analogy of human personality must be supplemented in another way. Human nature is too rich to be embodied in a single human or person; therefore, it extends to many humans and only comes to full fruition in humanity. Thus, the Divine
Being unfolds its fullness in three Persons, but these are not three individuals alongside and separate from each other, but within the Divine Being, the threefold self-distinction, which incorporates the unfolding of Being into personality and makes it tri-personal. The unfolding of human nature is of two kinds; in the individual human to personality and in humanity to many individuals, who together also form a unity, a personality, just as Christ with the Church is one perfect man, 1 Corinthians 12:12, Ephesians 4:13. This double unfolding, which cannot be otherwise in humanity, is one in God; the unfolding of His Being into personality coincides with that of His
Being into Persons. The three Persons are the one Divine Personality brought to complete self-unfolding within and from and through and within the Essence.
From this, it can be inferred in what sense the third aforementioned question regarding the relationship of Essence and Person, and of the Persons among themselves, must be answered. With Tertullian, the three Persons are of one substance, one status, one power, but one God; they are three—not in status but in degree—one, not identical, but united; they are one God, from which these degrees, forms, and species are designated by the names Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. There is distinction, distribution, but no diversity and division. Athanasius and the Cappadocians described the hypostases as modes of existence, thereby indicating that, although one in Essence, they each had their own existence and differed in mode of existence. Thus, the distinction between Essence and Person and among the Persons lay in the reciprocal relation, in the Father, Son, and Spirit-being, in the properties of paternity (unbegottenness), filiation (generation), and procession (emanation). Augustine further elaborated on this. He did not derive the Trinity from the Father but from the Unity, from the deity, and did not consider it accidental, but essential to God. It belongs to His Essence to be triune. In this sense, being a Person is identical with the Essence itself. For there is no difference between God's being and being a person, but they are entirely the same, of the Trinity VII 6. Indeed, if being belonged to God in an absolute sense and being a Person in a relative sense, then the three Persons could not be one Essence. Therefore, each Person is equal to the whole Essence and as much as the other two or all three together. This is not so with creatures. A human is not as much as three humans. But in God it is not so; for neither is the essence of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit together greater than that of the Father alone or the Son alone, but those three substances or persons, if they may be so called, are equal to each one individually, of the Trinity VII 6. In the summary of the Trinity, there is as much unity as there are three together, and two are not more than one, and within themselves, they are infinite. Thus, each one is in each one, and all are in each one, and each one is in all, and all are in all, and all are one, ib. VI 10. The Trinity itself is as great as each individual person there, ib. VIII 1. Therefore, the distinction between essence and person and among the persons themselves cannot lie in any substance but only in the mutual relations. Whatever is said of God
Himself, and is said individually of each Person, that is, of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and at the same time is said of the Trinity