A philosophical problem with the Trinity

[jco2004]

So from all eternity we have the Divine Essence Being, which is the Father, and Known, which is the Son, and Willed, which is the Holy Spirit. Each contains the fullness of the Divine Essence, and the Father is the source of the other two by virtue of being the notion of “being”, which is logically prior to knowing and willing (something has “to be” to be known, and likewise to be willed in the sense that we’re using that notion). Nothing is contained in any of the Three Persons that isn’t contained in the other Two, except for their manner of origin (or lack thereof in the case of the Father). You’ll see that this doesn’t make the Divine Essence it’s own seperate “thing” from the Persons either, but rather by virtue of the Divine Essence essentially being Person, we necessarily have Three Divine Persons: the Trinity.

Well, I’m having trouble here. You say the Divine Essence is “essentially being Person”. And it’s not identical with any one of the Father, Son or Spirit. By my count, that makes four Persons, which I’m sure you don’t intend. Where am I going wrong? Joe

 

[Ghosty]

Well, I’m having trouble here. You say the Divine Essence is “essentially being Person”. And it’s not identical with any one of the Father, Son or Spirit. By my count, that makes four Persons, which I’m sure you don’t intend. Where am I going wrong? Joe

Actually, the Divine Essence is identical with all three, rather than none of them. It is not that there’s the Divine Essence, and then comes the Father, then the Son, then the Holy Spirit. The Father IS the Divine Essence, as is the Son, as is the Holy Spirit; the Divine Essence is in Three Persons, not Three Persons in the Divine Essence. The reason you have three Persons sharing one essence is because there are three fundamental elements of Personhood, and since each of those elements contain the whole Divine Essence (which is Personal) for reasons illustrated above, and two of these elements (knowing and willing) fundamentally contain opposite terms, such as knower and known.

Another way to think of it is that wherever you have “Divine Essence”, you have a Person, and this is because the Divine Essence is essentially Personal. First and foremost this is the Father, and the other two Persons proceed from Him, as opposed to the Father proceeding from the Divine Essence and then the others proceeding from Him.

So it goes like this:

“I Am that Am” as is = The Father → knows “I Am that Am” (Divine Essence) from all eternity = The Son → wills “I Am that Am” from all eternity = The Holy Spirit. There is no Divine Essence really distinct from the Persons; it is not hovering in the background of all Three as if they’re floating in a cloud of Divine Essence. This is how each Person is fully and truly God and not just a “part” of God, or a mode of God. Since the Divine Essence is Personal, when it is fully known or fully willed you have a distinct Person rather than an abstraction.

The Divine Essence can be spoken of “abstractly” as the traits shared in common with the Three Persons, but really such an “as is” description is properly the Father. This fits how Scripture speaks of the relation between Christ and the Father as well, since “deity” is never abstracted but rather Christ speaks about “receiving of the Father” and the Holy Spirit receiving from Himself and the Father. Deity is always clearly Personally identified with the Father whenever there is talk of the procession of the other two Persons. The Council of Florence also makes this explicit when it calls the Father the “source and principle of all deity”.

As you can see, this is not perfectly analogous to anything we can see in the world around us, because in nothing created is “essence” also “personal”. That can only occur in an eternal being, which is God. If essence were identical with person in anything, then it would be an Eternal (uncreated) Person, since God knows all essences from eternity. Only if essence and person are seperate, with personhood bestowed on an essence temporally (just as it was on our essences at conception) can we truly have creatures. In other words, this is where the outer limit of our ability to reason slams us in the face, and we can only marvel at the Mystery of the Trinity; there is a painfully limited way in which we can logically account for the most troubling aspects of it, but we can’t ever comprehend It. Such is not merely beyond our limited human capability, but beyond all creatures including the greatest of angels.

Peace and God bless!

 

[StMarkEofE]

This is very profound, and I am quite pleased to read these words from your keyboard.

Peace

Some things should remain just that: A Mystery.

 

[Aureole]

yeshua, I have to agree with what Hesychios said. I still want to do what Ghosty mentioned but I know I can’t solve the mystery.

 

[Al_Masetti]

The “problem” is that God is Infinite. Maybe even, Infinity,

But us humans are at best flyspecks on the wall with free will and IQ’s of 100. Whereas God’s IQ is Infinite.

All things are possible with God.

Just sit and think about that for a while, preferably while in an hour session in a Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration chapel.

 

[yeshua]

yeshua, I have to agree with what Hesychios said. I still want to do what Ghosty mentioned but I know I can’t solve the mystery.

Aureole,

There is solving the mystery or there is accepting that mystery. You can not solve the mystery of the Trinity because there is nothing to solve. What one can do is accept God and His relationship with us, which is not bound by philosophical reasoning, matters like these are meant for the theological condition. Do you feel concrete with philosophical metaphors for God? If so, read no further, yet if not, you recognize that the philosophical arena can’t define Him.

Syriac Maronite spirituality suggests that the nature of the Trinity can be found by cultivating a vision of and mindfullness of God. St. Ephrem explains this proces of single-mindedness of God as the “luminous eye.” We Maronites like to say daily living is waking up to mystery.Your vision will lead you to observing the Hidden God in His Creation and a mindfullness of His nature.

“Daily living is a celebration of seeing into things as a divine opportunity to become like and be with God.”

People see themselves as human beings with glimpses of the divine, yet this is wrong, Aureole. We are by means of Love divine creations with glimpses of human experience. Don’t see yourself and God through those! Cultivate your spiritul awareness by understanding Him, not defining Him!

"May Christ enlighten the eyes of your hearts that you may know the great hope to which He has called you, and the immeasurable scope of His power in us who believe." - Ephesians 1:18-19

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

Aureole,

There is solving the mystery or there is accepting that mystery. You can not solve the mystery of the Trinity because there is nothing to solve. What one can do is accept God and His relationship with us, which is not bound by philosophical reasoning, matters like these are meant for the theological condition. Do you feel concrete with philosophical metaphors for God? If so, read no further, yet if not, you recognize that the philosophical arena can’t define Him.

Syriac Maronite spirituality suggests that the nature of the Trinity can be found by cultivating a vision of and mindfullness of God. St. Ephrem explains this proces of single-mindedness of God as the “luminous eye.” We Maronites like to say daily living is waking up to mystery.Your vision will lead you to observing the Hidden God in His Creation and a mindfullness of His nature.

“Daily living is a celebration of seeing into things as a divine opportunity to become like and be with God.”

People see themselves as human beings with glimpses of the divine, yet this is wrong, Aureole. We are by means of Love divine creations with glimpses of human experience. Don’t see yourself and God through those! Cultivate your spiritul awareness by understanding Him, not defining Him!

"May Christ enlighten the eyes of your hearts that you may know the great hope to which He has called you, and the immeasurable scope of His power in us who believe." - Ephesians 1:18-19

Yeshua,

All that is so beautifully expressed.

You are looking at it from the wonderfully orthodox way which blends mysticism (and ascetic effort) with theology - in other words our theologians are not our logicians and philosophers but our men of prayer and holiness and ascetic lifestyle.

Supplementing understanding of religious truth by human logic is not very productive. Good theology happens when holiness of life leads us deeper into an understanding of the words of God (theo-logos–God-logic).

The following words spoken a century ago by a great Orthodox theologian, Metropolitan [now Saint] Philaret of Moscow, echo your words and express this attitude perfectly:

**“None of the mysteries of the most secret wisdom of God ought to appear alien or altogether transcendent to us, but in all humility we must apply our spirit to the contemplation of divine things’. To put it in another way, we must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically.”**Those words are some of the most profound I have ever read. They offer not just an approach to theology but an entire way of life.

 

[Semper_Fi_1]

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity asserts that God is three distinct Persons, “one in essence and undivided.” From a philosophical perspective, however, it is logically impossible to have three distinct instances of one essence, or three Persons who are numerically indentical. For reference,* numeric identity* is the relation that obtains each thing and itself, i.e. “Joe Smith is Joe Smith.”

Numeric identity is a problem because, as stated above, it is logically impossible to have two (much less three!) distinct instances of the same essence. Each Person may be exactly identical to the other two, but each is, by neccesity, a distinct entity (or essence). How can the Father, for example, be both the Father and the Son in essence, yet remain somehow distinct from the Son?

Please forgive any inaccuracies or awkardness on my part. I’m relatively new to philosophy, but I really enjoy it. Though I know that the Trinitarian mystery is beyond complete comprehension, I’m curious to know how past philosophers, either eastern or western, have tackled this problem. Thanks for the help!

God bless,

Chris

Joe Smith is Joe Smith is Joe Smith. God is God is God. Your problem is solved with a little multiplication instead of addition my friend.

 

[Aureole]

yeshua you have a knack for putting things just the right way. What a blessing that is! I realize that the Trinity is a mystery but I can’t help but ponder God. I’m not a theologian or philosopher by any means, yet I make my own poor attempt at both and wonder. The next time I see the Lord I’ll simply say “Lord, you are a mystery, unfathomable to me. Yet I desire You, help me to fulfill that desire.” He will because a few seconds later I will enter the fullest communion with Him I can now have.

Anyway, I don’t mean to change the topic of the thread. Or am I really changing the topic? Perhaps a question some philosophers can take up (Hopefully in another thread).

 

[Thepeug]

“The Trinity” by Karl Rahner (1970s) and its references can give you a good insight.

Cristiano,

Thanks for the recommendation. Incidentally, this isn’t the first time someone has suggested Rahner for a variety of different questions. I’ll definitely have to check out some of his works.

God bless,

Chris

 

[Ghosty]

Cristiano,

Thanks for the recommendation. Incidentally, this isn’t the first time someone has suggested Rahner for a variety of different questions. I’ll definitely have to check out some of his works.

God bless,

Chris

Let me be the first to dissuade you from Rahner

His language is extremely confusing, and largely novel. My friends in seminary say that his “heyday” has already passed, and his works are slipping away into the dustbin of history. His attempt to merge classic Trinitarian theology with Hegelian and existential philosophy is more and more being viewed as a dead end. He was beholden to an era of philosophy that quickly outlived itself. He was rejected by the best classical theologians of his day, and he’s being rejected more and more by his own “students” now.

Jumping in with Rahner is jumping in bed with 19th/early-20th century German philosophy and trying to “baptize” it, which more and more appears can’t be done; the best parts of Rahner is simply trying to re-invent the wheel that the Doctors and Fathers developed long ago, and the worst parts are Hegelian nightmares of the world “becoming Trinity” (not to be confused with the true, ancient, and Scriptural belief that we aquire the Divine Nature).

You’re far better off reading the Church Fathers on the Trinity, IMO, such as St. Augustine’s work “On the Trinity”, and St. Gregory of Nyssa’s “Not Three Gods”, both of which are easily available online. For more a more technical and systematic presentation, I recommend St. Thomas Aquinas’ "Summa Theologica, Book One-Part One. He draws primarily on St. Augustine and the Eastern Fathers (including Pseudo-Dionysis), which is why you should familiarize yourself with those first, and attempts to condense their arguments into a single systematic thesis. It takes a bit of familiarization with how he uses terms, but if you really want a clear and concise, systematic presentation of Tradition you’ll find it there. You’ll be able to glean where Rahner is trying to go with his ideas, but without the dead-weight of German philosophical systems that were past their use-by date when they were first concocted

If your interested in a somewhat expansive and technical “deconstruction” of Rahner’s views by a few lay-theologians, check out this thread. It’s not specifically about the Trinity per se, but it illustrates certain problems in Rahner’s thinking, showing how he diverges from the Traditional understanding on matters, both Eastern and Western.

Just my two-cents!

Peace and God bless!

 

[Thepeug]

It is true that you exist. It is also true that you can know yourself as you exist; and it is equally true that you can love yourself. The “you” is like God the Father; the knowledge of yourself is like God the son; and the love you can have for yourself is like the Holy Ghost. These three are one substance with you, yet the knowledge is not the love, and the love is not the knowledge. The three - you, your selfknowledge, and you self love, are three, yet together form the one “you”.

Struggling and USMC,

While I think I understand (and certainly appreciate!) your analogies, I think they leave unsolved the problem of numeric identity posed by the Trinity. If we conceive of God the Son as knowledge and God the Spirit as love, or God the Father as God-without-source and God the Son as God-from-the-Father, we attempt to understand the relation between the three Persons of the Trinity, but the ontological question is still unsolved (namely, how can there be two distinct instances of numerically identical beings?)

“God-without-source” is not an ontological being, but a descriptor of God the Father. In the same way, I can say that I’m a college student, a male, and a Catholic. While each of these descriptors is distinct from one another in the sense that each contains a different meaning, they are all related to one another in their description of one entity; in this instance, me. Chris the Catholic, however, is not ontologically distinct from Chris the male; each is merely a label that describes one being.

In the same way, it seems logical that “God the Father” and “God the Son” are distinct descriptors of one essence. To attribute ontological personhood to a descriptor, however, is to envision God as an animated Socratic “form” (Justice, Beauty, etc.).

Does that make any sense? If God-the-Father is God-without-source, can we even speak of any Person of the Godhead as an ontological being?

God bless,

Chris

 

[Thepeug]

You wish to philosophically render the divine…I would reason that Eastern Christians would refuse to participate in this anthropomorphise exercise of God. But that’s just me…

yeshua,

As a Byzantine Catholic, let me assure that I am constantly awed by the mysteries of faith. The Trinity, being the ultimate mystery, is one that I can never even begin to fully understand. I trust the wisdom of the Church over my own intellect any day, and I believe firmly in the Trinity as understood and professed by the Church.

That said, I don’t see anything wrong with using one’s God-given intellect through philosophy, science, or math to better understand and appreciate one’s Creator. Does not submission of intellect and will to the mystery of God engender curiosity about that mystery? My experiences of God through natural science leave me only more certain of His transcendence, His power, and His love for His creation. Though one must be careful not to reduce God to an academic proposition, I think that any Christian, whether eastern or western, can draw from multiple disciplines to foster (through the grace of the Holy Spirit) a faith that is both experiential and intellectual.

God bless,

Chris

 

[Thepeug]

Where do you get that idea from?

Take a gold ingot. What is the essence or substance of this item? It is gold. Take a second gold ingot. It is of the same essence or substance as the first ingot.

Zaphod,

The two ingots may be qualitatively identical, but not numerically identical. Gold ingot A may be physically identical to gold ingot B, but ingot A cannot be ingot B in essence and still be distinct from B.

Similarly, I’m having trouble understanding how there can be three distinct Persons in one God. It’s like saying that ingot A and ingot B are distinct from one another, yet both are ingot A.

God bless,

Chris

 

[Thepeug]

Part of me says “It’s a mystery” while another part of me says “Let’s reason out the answer”. I’m an Eastern Westerner.

Call me a Western Easterner.

 

[Thepeug]

So from all eternity we have the Divine Essence Being, which is the Father, and Known, which is the Son, and Willed, which is the Holy Spirit.

Ghosty,

As usual, I’m afraid that your response, being so erudite, is way over my head! I can understand some of it, though, and I’ll have to save your response to examine it more thoroughly. The above portion caught my attention, however.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it seems to me that to identify the three Persons of the Trinity as “Being”, “Known”, and “Willed” is to reduce three actual Persons to abstract ideas. Akin to Socrates’ notion of the Forms, the ideas may describe the Persons of the Trinity, but how can the ideas be the Persons themselves? Should each Person be thought of as an ontological being, or simply as a modal relation within the Godhead?

God bless,

Chris

P.S.

Thanks for the warning about Rahner and for the other reading recommendations. While I don’t have the full Summa, I do have Aquinas’ Shorter Summa (formerly known as the Compendium of Theology, if I’m not mistaken). I’ll see what I can find in regards to the Trinity…and then try St. Gregory of Nyssa for a nice balance!

 

[Zaphod]

Zaphod,

The two ingots may be qualitatively identical, but not numerically identical. Gold ingot A may be physically identical to gold ingot B, but ingot A cannot be ingot B in essence and still be distinct from B.

If you could identify something about ingot B that is unique to B, then ingot A would not be the essence of ingot B IN THAT RESPECT. But both ingots would remain the same essence in being gold.

When it is said that the Father and Son are the same essence, it doesn’t mean that the Son has the essence of Fatherliness, nor that the Father has the essence of Sonliness. It means that both have the same divine essence, like two ingots have the essence of being gold.

The “same essence” formula was meant to refute the Arian idea that the Son was made of created stuff. The Church said no, the Son is made of divine uncreated stuff.

Similarly, I’m having trouble understanding how there can be three distinct Persons in one God. It’s like saying that ingot A and ingot B are distinct from one another, yet both are ingot A.

One wouldn’t say that ingot B is ingot A. One would say that the one Treasury consists of ingots A and B.

I guess you are bringing an assumption to the table that assumes God to be a person. But the church says no, God is not a person, God is three persons. Simply abandon your starting assumption and you’ll be ok.

 

[Ghosty]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it seems to me that to identify the three Persons of the Trinity as “Being”, “Known”, and “Willed” is to reduce three actual

Persons to abstract ideas. Akin to Socrates’ notion of the Forms, the ideas may describe the Persons of the Trinity, but how can the ideas be the Persons themselves? Should each Person be thought of as an ontological being, or simply as a modal relation within the Godhead?

Your objection is actually a very, very good one, and is the main one Aquinas is addressing when he lays out that real relations are actually distinct Persons. Wondering about this matter hardly makes you foolish, it actually shows that you have a keener grasp of philosophy than you may realize

That being said, the key to your objection is that the Essence of God is Personal, and the Essence of God is pure, actual being. If it were not, Modalism would be the logical result as you have indicated. I’ll do a “long” answer, and then a quick summary at the end.

Taking the question of persons and essence and God from another angle, let’s consider why when we think of our own essence it’s not a different person (and why when we think of others, our image of them is not a person in itself). First and foremost, our essence is not personal. This may seem strange since we are persons, but let’s consider this from a philosophical perspective. What this means is that while all the features of a person can be in place as an “essence”, it’s not “actualized” until created by God. The essence of a human person actually “pre-exists” in the mind of God, so to speak, but that doesn’t mean that the essence in question is eternal. We are “actualized” in time, because we change from being a “potential person” to an “actual person”, and change is a property of time. God chooses the moments in time to actualize this or that essence, and only when the essence is actualized is it truly a person; before that it’s the idea of the person (which is perhaps why God is said to know us for all time, even before our conception).

Now when we imagine someone, we are not dealing directly with their essence, but rather abstracting certain features of them and putting them together in our mind. Even if we WERE capable of fully comprehending the essence of a human person in our minds, it still wouldn’t be another person because the essence is not personal in itself, but is so only by being actualized by God. We’d be dealing with 99% of that person that we know, but we would forever be lacking the actualization of that person. For the Divine Essence this is different, however, because the Divine Essence is Personal by definition; it requires no outside actualization to go from potential to actual, and such an idea is utterly blasphemous because a ) it would mean there is something above God, and b ) it would mean that God was created at some point. Since the Divine Essence always is, it must be a Person since at the very least the Father is fully God, always is, and is a Person (of course the other Persons are too, but I stress the Father here because there’s no way in which the Father is said to have an origin).

Now, since God is omniscient, He can fully comprehend His own essence (which is something humans arguably can’t do, and we certainly can’t comprehend anything else’s essence, even that of a fly), and since that essence is Personal that means His “self-image” is Personal. If the Divine Essence were not personal, then God’s comprehension of it would be just like our own self-comprehension where we can abstract all the details except true personhood (our self-image doesn’t get up and walk around).

So it is a bit of a paradox, but the answer lies in the nature of the Divine Essence and how it is different from ours.

Summary: The Divine Essence is Personal in itself, since the un-originate Father is Personal without needing any outside force to turn Him from a potential to an actual Person. This is unlike us as we need God to turn us from potential to actual. So when the Father “imagines” the Divine Essence, He “imagines” a fully actual person and not just an abstraction, since there is no limit to His power of Knowledge (we only have a limited self-image because our power of knowledge is not omniscient, and the object of our knowledge is not self-actualizing).

 

[Ghosty]

I’ll follow that up with a bit of an explaination of just what “essence” is. The essence is what makes a thing what it is. My essence is my humanity and my personhood/personality for example, but in me and all other creatures personhood is something added to the essence at our creation. Prior to that, we are merely “potential”, a “glimmer in our parents’ eyes” so to speak. As soon as I’m conceived, however, my essence meets personhood and I become an actual person rather than a potential person.

God, being omniscient, knows all essences from eternity including ours. This doesn’t make us eternal, however, because we’re not “complete” until we go from being potential to being actual, and this happens in time and not eternity.

For God the essence and the person are the same, as can be seen in the case of the Father as He doesn’t “come from” anything or anyone. That doesn’t mean that the individual person “The Father” is shared by the other two Persons, but rather that “Personhood” is an innate quality of the Divine Essence, which is unique to the Divine Essence.

The “what” remains the same for all three, however, and that “what” is utterly simple and all-powerful, lacking nothing, and therefore there is no way to distinguish between the Divine Essence in the Father and the Divine Essence in the Son and the Holy Spirit. In us the essences can be distinguished because they have differences in the features such as strength, attitude, will, ect. In us the essences also include different bodies, but God does not have a body to make such distinctions with. God’s strength is ultimate, however, with no possible variation, and the same goes for all other “features” of the Divine Essence. So, without a body to seperate there is no way to seperate at all, only to distinguish between Persons sharing the exact same “features”.

The Father’s strength is God’s strength. The Son’s strength is God’s strength. The Holy Spirit’s strength is God’s strength. The only possible distinctions arise because of the notions of Knowledge and Will, which are fundamental to any personhood, and always include two opposite terms (the willer and the willed, the knower and the known). Even though the Father is the knower, and the Son is the known, they share the exact same “features” because they share the Divine Essence. The only features they can’t share are their opposite terms (from which their revealed names arise), and these things aren’t actually features of the Divine Essence per se, but rather relations pertaining to the Divine Essence, just you knowing me isn’t a feature of my essence, but just a relation of my essence to yours.

So when the Father acts, He acts by the Divine Power which is the very same Divine Power that the Son and the Holy Spirit have, which is why we say that it’s the Trinity that acts on creation as a whole even when we give special “credit” to certain Persons based on the properness of that action to their particular “opposite term”. For example, since the Holy Spirit’s “opposite term” is from the Divine Will, when the Trinity does a something to us pertaining to “will” we usually say it is the action of the Holy Spirit. Since the Son is from the Knowledge, when it comes to “knowing” we generally speak of the Son, or Christ. Since the Father is the “being”, when we speak of God “as He is” we often associate it with the Father. This isn’t because those Persons are more truly those things than the others, but only because their identities are properly associated with those features of the Divine Essence; since the Holy Spirit’s “opposite relation” is in the Will, for example, when we speak of the power of God, or God doing things, we often speak of the “movement of the Spirit”. This isn’t to reduce the Holy Spirit to a mere modality of God, but simply to reinforce that association between that Divine Person and the faculty of the Divine Essence that they are most intimately tied, in this case the Divine Will. Incidently, you can see this in the Old Testament too, such as when God gives life to the world (and most intimately, humanity) by “breathing” (spirating) over it.

Hope that was more clarifying than confusing. Feel free to ask any specific questions!

Peace and God bless!

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity asserts that God is three distinct Persons, “one in essence and undivided.” From a philosophical perspective, however, it is logically impossible to have three distinct instances of one essence, or three Persons who are numerically indentical. For reference,* numeric identity* is the relation that obtains each thing and itself, i.e. “Joe Smith is Joe Smith.”

Numeric identity is a problem because, as stated above, it is logically impossible to have two (much less three!) distinct instances of the same essence. Each Person may be exactly identical to the other two, but each is, by neccesity, a distinct entity (or essence). How can the Father, for example, be both the Father and the Son in essence, yet remain somehow distinct from the Son?

The Father is the Father - The Father is not the Son. The Father is God. The Son is God. Each Person is distinct from the other two - but not separate: none can be reduced to the others, nor conversely: even conceptually.​

IOW, each One fully manifests/is the Divine Essence - each fully indwells each of the Other Persons, & is fully indwelt by each of them. The Trinity is an intimate inter-Personal, intra-Personal, communion.

Person & Essence aren’t the same - so to “be Father” is not identical with “being Son”: only the Son is the Son, and He is Son eternally. To “be God” is what both are - but neither is the Person Who the Other Is. Each is infinitely distinct from the others - but not separate from them.

So the Father is not the Son - both are the One God

The Divine Nature is totally & eternally common to all three Persons - to be “that-Person”, is proper to each Person.

You could do very much worse than read St. Thomas Aquinas - I recommend the 1963-78 Blackfriars English & Latin edition of the Summa Theologiae; it is in 60 volumes, and includes plenty of notes & appendices. The volumes on the Trinity are 6 & 7 - questions 27 to 43 of part 1

I hope that any errors in this will be corrected ##

Please forgive any inaccuracies or awkardness on my part. I’m relatively new to philosophy, but I really enjoy it. Though I know that the Trinitarian mystery is beyond complete comprehension, I’m curious to know how past philosophers, either eastern or western, have tackled this problem. Thanks for the help!

God bless,

Chris