The objection
If each person is God and the Trinity is also God, there seem to be four divine beings. If, by contrast, only the three together constitute God, each person is only a part of God.
1. The alternative rests on a false idea of “being”
Divine being is no additional thing behind Father, Son and Spirit. Anyone imagining it as a fourth bearer of consciousness or action has made a further person out of a statement of being. Likewise, “Trinity” is not the proper name of a fourth agent. The expression designates the one God as Father, Son and Spirit.
On the other hand, deity is no total quantity to which each person contributes a share. Colossians 2,9 speaks of the entire fullness of deity in Christ. The statement permits no Son who, taken by himself, would be only one third divine.
2. Parts make up a deficiency; the divine persons do not
A component does not possess the completeness of the composite whole. It supplements other parts and is supplemented by them. Precisely this relationship is denied of the divine persons. The Son does not receive additional omnipotence when the Father is added; the Spirit fills no gap in divine knowledge.
Personal distinction adds no perfection to divine being that a person lacked. It concerns the unmistakable being Father, being Son and being Spirit. Full deity can therefore belong to each person without adding three portions.[1]
3. Composition would destroy God's originality
A being consisting of constituents depends on those constituents' being together. Its unity would require explanation. The classical doctrine of divine simplicity denies precisely this dependence: God is not made God by something still more fundamental.[2]
This consideration does not replace the biblical revelation of the persons. Rather, it guards against interpreting the revealed threefoldness on the pattern of an association, organism or three-part object. Such images can illustrate shared attention but not depict God's being.
4. One need not choose between a fourth and thirds
The two proposed possibilities are exhaustive only if every real distinction would have to be either separation or division. Precisely this is denied by the Trinitarian statement: Father and Son are relationally distinct without being separate divine existences or incomplete parts.
Thomas therefore formulates that being is not separated from the persons and is not multiplied in them.[1] The doctrine remains demanding; but it is not the assertion of a fourth god or three partial gods. Anyone forcing it under one of these two descriptions has already removed its decisive distinction.
5. A group consciousness would be an additional claim
A team is not a player in the same sense in which its members are players. Correspondingly, “the community is God” would not yet explain how each person is wholly God. If three independent divine beings are only afterward joined into community, the plurality of beings remains; if the community additionally receives its own I, a fourth personal bearer indeed arises.
Classical doctrine presupposes neither. Deity is neither an association's name nor an aggregate consciousness arising from three partial consciousnesses. Father, Son and Spirit do not each possess a third of divine knowledge. The one knowledge belongs to them undividedly; it is no additional subject alongside them. This excludes a particular group model. How real personal distinction and this one knowing belong together must be explained by the doctrine of persons; the mere group analogy does not accomplish it.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeI, q. 39, a. 1–3: being and persons; no common substance detached from Father and Son.
- James E. Dolezal, God without PartsCh. 2: composition and dependence; presentation of Thomistic distinctions.