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B. God as Trinity in Unity.
The word “Trinity” is not quite as expressive as the Holland word “Drieeenheid,” for it may
simply denote the state of being three, without any implication as to the unity of the three. It is
generally understood, however, that, as a technical term in theology, it includes that idea. It
goes without saying that, when we speak of the Trinity of God, we refer to a trinity in unity, and
to a unity that is trinal.
1. THE PERSONALITY OF GOD AND THE TRINITY.
As stated in the preceding, the communicable
attributes of God stress His personality, since they reveal Him as a rational and moral Being. His
life stands out clearly before us in Scripture as a personal life; and it is, of course, of the
greatest importance to maintain the personality of God, for without it there can be no religion
in the real sense of the word: no prayer, no personal communion, no trustful reliance and no
confident hope. Since man is created in the image of God, we learn to understand something of
the personal life of God from the contemplation of personality as we know it in man. We should
be careful, however, not to set up man’s personality as a standard by which the personality of
God must be measured. The original form of personality is not in man but in God; His is
archetypal, while man’s is ectypal. The latter is not identical with the former, but does contain
faint traces of similarity with it. We should not say that man is personal, while God is super-
personal (a very unfortunate term), for what is super-personal is not personal; but rather, that
what appears as imperfect in man exists in infinite perfection in God. The one outstanding
difference between the two is that man is uni-personal, while God is tri-personal. And this tri-
personal existence is a necessity in the Divine Being, and not in any sense the result of a choice
of God. He could not exist in any other than the tri-personal form. This has been argued in
various ways. It is very common to argue it from the idea of personality itself. Shedd bases his
argument on the general self-consciousness of the triune God, as distinguished from the
particular individual self-consciousness of each one of the Persons in the Godhead, for in self-
consciousness the subject must know itself as an object, and also perceive that it does. This is
possible in God because of His trinal existence. He says that God could not be self-
contemplating, self-cognitive, and self-communing, if He were not trinal in His
constitution.[Dogm. Theol., I, pp. 393 f., 251 ff., 178ff.] Bartlett presents in an interesting way a
variety of considerations to prove that God is necessarily tri-personal.[The Triune God, Part
Two.] The argument from personality, to prove at least a plurality in God, can be put in some
such form as this: Among men the ego awakens to consciousness only by contact with the non-
ego. Personality does not develop nor exist in isolation, but only in association with other
persons. Hence it is not possible to conceive of personality in God apart from an association of
equal persons in Him. His contact with His creatures would not account for His personality any
more than man’s contact with the animals would explain his personality. In virtue of the tri-