Chapter 030 - The Plurality of Persons in the Divinity

We make use of the word "Trinity" in speaking of God, because Plurality of Persons is admitted; for there is a Plurality of Real Relations; and hence Plurality subsists in the Divine Nature. This Plurality does not, however, extend to more than Three, because the several Divine Persons are several Relations really subsisting but distinct from each other by relative opposition only; therefore, while opposite Relations belong to distinct Persons, those not opposite belong to the same. Thus Paternity and Filiation have respect to two different Persons, while the other two Relations, viz. Spiration and Procession, are not opposed to either of the foregoing, but only to each other, on which account they are not applicable to the same Person; therefore one (Procession) belongs to a distinct Person, while the other (Spiration) befits both the Father and the Son, Procession by way of Love belonging to the Holy Spirit.

And numerical terms signify, in the Divinity, that which they affirm, only adding negation; because in the Divinity such terms are not received as number, which is a species of quantity, and are not applicable to God except metaphorically in common with other corporeal properties (such as length, breadth, etc.); hence they are to be received as Plurality in a transcendental sense. Multitude thus accepted stands to the many of which it is predicated, as one does to being, with which it is convertible; in which sense one adds nothing to the conception of existence, except the negation of division. Therefore, when we say One it signifies that thing undivided; as one, said of a man, signifies the undivided substance of man; and when we speak of many things, multitude, thus understood, signifies these things undivided as regards them singly; but number, which is quantitative species, expresses some accident superadded to the things, and so likewise does one, as it is the principle of numbers. Therefore numerical terms in the Divinity signify that which they affirm and add nothing except negation of division.

The term Person is common to the three Divine Persons, in a logical sense, not as denoting genus or species, but as vaguely signifying a common nature with a determinate mode of existence such as belongs to individuals, i.e. that it exists by itself apart from others. By the name of an individual so designated we signify the distinguishing determination; so by the name Socrates we mean his flesh and bones; but there is this difference, that by "a person" we mean human nature or an individual of such nature, with the mode of existence which belongs to individuals; but the word "person" does not properly signify individuality in a certain nature; it means, rather, the substance from which such nature depends; and this is common to the Three Divine Persons, for each of Them subsists in the Divine Nature distinct from the Others; and in this sense the term Person is in a logical manner common to the Three Divine Persons.