From My Lecture on Human Nature and the New Testament
What is a person?
A. Boethius (circa 475-525 CE): "an individual substance of a rational nature" (rationalis naturae individua substantia).
B. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) contends that the term "person" when applied to God does refer to "an individual substance of a rational nature" (rationalis naturae individua substantia) as long as one carefully nuances or qualifies what is meant by "individual" (i.e., incommunicable) "rational" (non-discursive, but intellectual) and "substance" (‘self-grounded existing’). Thomas views God as ipsum esse or subsistent being.
C. Richard of St. Victor (died 1173) defines "person" (in relation to God) as "an incommunicable existence of the divine nature" (divinae naturae incommunicabilis existentia). Persons have a certain property that distinguishes them from other persons (Fortman, The Triune God, 191-192).
D. Some believe that the Trinity doctrine possibly helps us to understand what personhood entails. Maybe a "person" is an individual substance of a rational nature, one who either actually reasons or who has the potential to deploy reason (i.e., faculty of inference or intelligence). The term “persons” may also have reference to entities that intelligently relate to one another as Father, Son and Holy Spirit putatively relate to one another in the Godhead. Other qualifying properties of persons could include the potential for intentionality (object-aboutness).
E. One difficulty with the Trinity concerns the problem of identity (from Cartwright):
(1) The Father is God.
(2) The Son is God.
(3) The Holy Spirit is God.
(4) The Father is not the Son.
Example of Venus:
(a) Venus is the morning star.
(b) Venus is the evening star.
(c) The morning star is not the evening star.
To solve this apparent difficulty, Trinitarians appeal to the concept of relative (rather than absolute) identity. Absolute identity (definition = “X = Y → Y = X”). Relative identity (definition = “X and Y are the same F but not the same G,” where F and G stand for predicates). Hence, the Father or Son are not absolutely identical to “God,” but only relatively identical to the divine substance.
F. Another seeming difficulty with using the Trinity doctrine to determine what it means to be a person might also be the fact that God’s putative triunity transcends our phenomenal experiences. Whether God is triune or not appears to be noumenal concern, not a phenomenal one. God’s triune nature just might be thinkable but not knowable (a Kantian approach).
Dale Tuggy proposed an interesting question, on whether the Tri{3}nity in practice, (contra on paper), functions as "One Person", i.e. is the Tri{3}nity theory functional "Modalism" in disguise?
ReplyDeleteIt's a good question which he raised in one paper, I believe. I have that paper and you've probably read it as well. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThe summary of the mystery of the Holy Trinity is: The one God is a trinity, Deus unus Trinitas. The word Trinitas was used as early as the 2nd century; τρῖας Theophil. II 15; trinitas: Tertullian. Prax. 2. Since one cannot claim both unity and trinity without contradiction about the exact same subject, the question is: in God, what should be called one and what should be called three. According to the teaching of the 4th Lateran Council (Caput Firmiter Denz 428.), in God there are three persons or hypostases, and there is one substance, substance or nature.
ReplyDeleteSo in God there is one 1. the essence, the completeness of divine existence, the so-called physical essence of God. 2. The substance, which in theological language is often and in philosophy generally a hypostasis (quod substat), opposed to the attributes: it is a being that exists in itself and not in another as an internal subject (ens existens in se et non in alio tamquam subiecto intrinsecae inhaesionis). However, in theological language, very often and always in the doctrine of the Trinity: the essence of the existing hypostasis (August. Mor. Ecclesiae et manich. II 2, 2; Trinit. VII 6, 11; VIII prooem; Thom III 2, 6 ad 3; Pot. 7, 2.). 3. The nature, i.e., the complete content of existence, viewed from the perspective of activity; what is essence from a static point of view is nature from a dynamic point of view, the indirect principle of activities (principium quo agendi remotum).
In God, there are three: 1. The hypostasis (suppositum = the independent, self-existent), i.e., the complete, independent existence, which not only stands in itself, like substance in general, but also has its own existence, insofar as it is not tied to anything else as its physical or essential part (like an arm to a human, or the soul to the body). The complete existence is therefore characterized by a lack of content in its own kind and by non-communicability. The complete, independent existence forms a closed circle of existence and activity; it is completely independent, and in this respect, it is the owner and subject of its activities (principium quod agendi): actiones sunt suppositorum. 2. Subsistence in a concrete sense is identical with the suppositum; in an abstract sense, it is the mode of existence of the suppositum or of the complete, independent existence. Thus, the suppositum subsists = the hypostasis exists independently. 3. The person is an intelligent hypostasis, i.e., it is a being whose closed independence, hypostasis, consists in holding itself in the power of its consciousness and will: it is conscious and self-powered, self-legal (sui iuris) being. This is expressed by Boethius' famous definition: persona est rationalis naturae individua substantia (Thom I 29, 1.). The person is therefore an individual that is a hypostasis in terms of its mode of existence and intelligent in terms of its content of existence (the "actual" self-consciousness is not part of the concept of the person!).
Although the content of these expressions was professed by the Church Fathers from the beginning, insofar as they spoke of the one divine reality as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the expressions themselves were not clearly fixed from the beginning and only gained their precise meaning after centuries of fluctuation. During this development, Latin usage, thanks to Tertullian's linguistic genius and unrivaled authority, settled earlier.
ReplyDeleteAmong the Greeks, there was never a disagreement that what is one in God was called φύσις. But many people considered οὺσία to be identical with the ὑπόστασις in the spirit of Platonic philosophy, and thus, like Origen (Origen. Orat. 15, 1.), they confessed ἑτεροουσία about the Father and the Son; the Council of Antioch in 269 also read monarchianism from Paul of Samosata's ὁμοούσιος. The Western (Latin) Church Fathers long avoided hypostasis, which in literal translation means substance, because since Tertullian, the Latin church used substance to denote what is one in God. Even in 362, an Alexandrian council has no objection to whether one confesses one hypostasis or three consubstantial hypostases about the Trinity (Cf. August. Trinit. V 2, 3; VII 4, 9.). The Greeks, however, long resisted the term "persona", because the corresponding Greek word: πρόσωπον also means an actor's mask, role, appearance, and Sabellianism also used it in this sense. Basil (Ep 236, 6 etc.) contributed greatly to making Greek Trinitarian usage more definite. Since then, the favorite formula of the Greeks has been: μία οὺσία ἐν τρίσιν ὑποσπάσεσιν.
The believer's mind transfers these expressions, like other concepts, to the Trinity in an analogous, but not metaphorical, but proper sense (Thom I 29, 3), and teaches: The one divine reality or nature or the Self-Existent subsists in three persons; that is, the one divine essence is fully owned by three persons. We prove this from the sources of revelation. The relationship between the three persons and the divine reality is such that the divine reality and the three persons differ from each other only in value, not in reality (virtualiter, non realiter); the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit differ in reality (realiter metaphysice) from each other, namely in that the Son is born eternally from the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son.