Explaining person to protestants

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billcu1

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I am trying to understand personage myself so I can explain it to protestants. Especially non-trinitarians I know from the more recent left-wing groups. They tell me God is triune. I explain mathematically that a circle or oneness can’t be triangulated(my term) A square yes is made up of 4 congruant triangles. So is personage a Aristotlean term Aquinas picked up or did he come up with it. A person isn’t exactly what personage is is it? God isn’t a person or human.

🤷
 
:twocents: It might help to pray. Learn to converse with Him.
 
billcu1 said:
I am trying to understand personage myself so I can explain it to protestants. Especially non-trinitarians I know from the more recent left-wing groups. They tell me God is triune. I explain mathematically that a circle or oneness can’t be triangulated(my term) A square yes is made up of 4 congruant triangles. So is personage a Aristotlean term Aquinas picked up or did he come up with it. A person isn’t exactly what personage is is it? God isn’t a person or human.

🤷
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What’s hard about it. You are a person. So is God, except he is Three Persons. Compare it to the family. A family is a Father, a son, and a Mother. The son represents the love between the Father and the Mother. The Mother represents the love of the Father and visa versa. Not an exact similie but close enough to get the point. The family is the love of three Persons, each with eachother.

Linus2nd
 
Scripture tells us God made us in his image and likeness. Since we are persons, we must in various ways image the personhood of God.
 
Linusthe2nd said:
What’s hard about it. You are a person. So is God, except he is Three Persons. Compare it to the family. A family is a Father, a son, and a Mother. The son represents the love between the Father and the Mother. The Mother represents the love of the Father and visa versa. Not an exact similie but close enough to get the point. The family is the love of three Persons, each with eachother.

Linus2nd
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Because When I talk to a “person” I am talking to one. With God when you are talking to 3 persons your talking to one God. :confused:
 
Hi Bilcu1;

That’s a very interesting question. I’m very interested myself in the notion of person, which has quite a rich philosophical and theological history.

Aquinas says that a person is “an individual substance of a rational nature.” That requires a little unpacking! In fact, Aquinas has quite a developed philosophy on what it means to be a person.

He starts with the notion of Person as it applies to God: “Person” refers to a relation which subsists in the divine nature. In other words, the nature of God is that he is relational. Because humans are made by God (and made in His image) we are likewise relational. So the term person essentially refers to a being-in-relation.

We can’t understand there being three persons in One God, because we are one person in one substance. But we have to be careful about trying to figure God out but referring him to what we are. Rather, what we should be doing is trying to figure out what we really are, but learning about what God is, as best we are able. What we know of God, since He has revealed this to us, is that personhood is all about relation. And our personhood is incomplete without God, who invites us to ‘complete ourselves’ so to speak, in relationship with Him.
 
Linusthe2nd said:
What’s hard about it. You are a person. So is God, except he is Three Persons. Compare it to the family. A family is a Father, a son, and a Mother. The son represents the love between the Father and the Mother. The Mother represents the love of the Father and visa versa. Not an exact similie but close enough to get the point. The family is the love of three Persons, each with eachother.

Linus2nd
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I find it hard to believe God is a person like a human. He or very spiritually high beings might “appear” to us as persons. But I don’t think God is really a person. At least not in the way most of us define it.
 
hicetnunc said:
Hi Bilcu1;

That’s a very interesting question. I’m very interested myself in the notion of person, which has quite a rich philosophical and theological history.

Aquinas says that a person is “an individual substance of a rational nature.” That requires a little unpacking! In fact, Aquinas has quite a developed philosophy on what it means to be a person.

He starts with the notion of Person as it applies to God: “Person” refers to a relation which subsists in the divine nature. In other words, the nature of God is that he is relational. Because humans are made by God (and made in His image) we are likewise relational. So the term person essentially refers to a being-in-relation.

We can’t understand there being three persons in One God, because we are one person in one substance. But we have to be careful about trying to figure God out but referring him to what we are. Rather, what we should be doing is trying to figure out what we really are, but learning about what God is, as best we are able. What we know of God, since He has revealed this to us, is that personhood is all about relation. And our personhood is incomplete without God, who invites us to ‘complete ourselves’ so to speak, in relationship with Him.
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So…IF a person is it’s own substance, then God having 3 persons does that mean he has 3 substances? I know his nature is one, divine nature.
 
billcu1 said:
So…IF a person is it’s own substance, then God having 3 persons does that mean he has 3 substances? I know his nature is one, divine nature.
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That’s a good question. In fact, it’s one of the objections raised against Aquinas’ definition (which he borrows from Boethius) which defines person as an ‘individual substance’, which he answers in ST I, q.30, a.1. His answer is that ‘substance’ as it applies to God does not mean three substances, but three subsisting relations in one substance. For example, you and I are one, individual substance, but we have a soul and a body. Aquinas says the soul has a subsistence of its own, because the soul of course is not made up of matter, while the body is (the soul is the form of the matter he would say). So he draws a distinction between subsistence and substance; you are one subsistent relation; God is three.
 
hicetnunc said:
. . . We can’t understand there being three persons in One God, because we are one person in one substance. But we have to be careful about trying to figure God out but referring him to what we are. . .
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One way I have of conceptualizing this is to recall that He made us, in His image, as Adam-and-Eve. When joined in love, giving ourselves to and uniting with one another, we resemble the Trinity.
 
billcu1 said:
I find it hard to believe God is a person like a human. He or very spiritually high beings might “appear” to us as persons. But I don’t think God is really a person. At least not in the way most of us define it.
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You are quite right to think so. But then we have: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Genesius 1:27

Were Adam and Eve not persons? Then how far removed from human personhood could God be if he made us in his own image and likeness? We have enough of God’s personhood to deserve his own special love, as any human child deserves the love of the parents who created him.
 
billcu1 said:
I find it hard to believe God is a person like a human. He or very spiritually high beings might “appear” to us as persons. But I don’t think God is really a person. At least not in the way most of us define it.
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Like Charlemagne III said in post #4, we are images of God. So if we are persons, He is a Persons. but a pure Spiritual, Eternal Being. That He is three Persons is some thing we accept on Faith as being Revealed by God Himself, Who cannot and does not lie. The Mysteries of the Faith we cannot understand, we believe on God’s authority and the authority of the Church.

Linus2nd
 
hicetnunc said:
Hi Bilcu1;

That’s a very interesting question. I’m very interested myself in the notion of person, which has quite a rich philosophical and theological history.

Aquinas says that a person is “an individual substance of a rational nature.” That requires a little unpacking! In fact, Aquinas has quite a developed philosophy on what it means to be a person.

He starts with the notion of Person as it applies to God: “Person” refers to a relation which subsists in the divine nature. In other words, the nature of God is that he is relational. Because humans are made by God (and made in His image) we are likewise relational. So the term person essentially refers to a being-in-relation.

We can’t understand there being three persons in One God, because we are one person in one substance. But we have to be careful about trying to figure God out but referring him to what we are. Rather, what we should be doing is trying to figure out what we really are, but learning about what God is, as best we are able. What we know of God, since He has revealed this to us, is that personhood is all about relation. And our personhood is incomplete without God, who invites us to ‘complete ourselves’ so to speak, in relationship with Him.
Click to expand...
What do you mean relations? That makes me think of universals for some reason.
 
billcu1 said:
What do you mean relations? That makes me think of universals for some reason.
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Hic may have his own thought on this, but I would explain it has mutual communication, love, action, the sharing of all things except personality…

Linus2nd
 
billcu1 said:
What do you mean relations? That makes me think of universals for some reason.
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Yes, relation can be a considered as a universal. It is also one of Aristotle’s categories which describes the way in which a substance is said to be. Like most things in philosophy, ‘relation’ has different applications. Relation in the sense of person is not simply a universal (though it can be considered as such) but a description of what it is ‘ontologically’ or as actually in being.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The single exception is Jesus Christ, God sharing his own personality with us.
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Actually, I think Linus is correct…St Thomas tells us that ‘person’ is “incommunicable”. But I think I know what you mean metaphorically speaking: God certainly does pour out his love into us.
 
billcu1 said:
I am trying to understand personage myself so I can explain it to protestants. Especially non-trinitarians I know from the more recent left-wing groups. They tell me God is triune. I explain mathematically that a circle or oneness can’t be triangulated(my term) A square yes is made up of 4 congruant triangles. So is personage a Aristotlean term Aquinas picked up or did he come up with it. A person isn’t exactly what personage is is it? God isn’t a person or human.

🤷
Click to expand...
If I understand your question correctly its not that hard.

God is the source of Life the Life that gives Life to all that is alive. Therefore you being alive have, you, your presence and your word that is expressed by you in your presence that is of you. How is these three things any different then God (as in the Father or Creator and Judge), God’s Presence (Holy Spirit) and God’s Word (revealed to us in the flesh our Lord Jesus Christ) that is revealed and or expressed in God’s Presence?
And for the sake of those who need to hear it. God, Word of God, hence the only begotten of God. Everything else is created by God through the Word of God expressed in the Presence of God while being Present in His creation.
 
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