Basic HTML Version
78
are often used interchangeably. There is no objection to this, provided we bear in mind that
they have slightly different connotations. Shedd distinguishes them as follows: “Essence is from
esse, to be, and denotes energetic being. Substance is from substare, and denotes the latent
possibility of being. . . . The term essence describes God as a sum-total of infinite perfections;
the term substance describes Him as the underlying ground of infinite activities. The first is,
comparatively, an active word; the last, a passive. The first is, comparatively, a spiritual, the last
a material term. We speak of material substance rather than of material essence.”[Dogm.
Theol., I, p. 271.] Since the unity of God was already discussed in the preceding, it is not
necessary to dwell on it in detail in the present connection. This proposition respecting the
unity of God is based on such passages as Deut. 6:4; Jas. 2:19, on the self-existence and
immutability of God, and on the fact that He is identified with His perfections as when He is
called life, light, truth, righteousness, and so on.
b. In this one Divine Being there are three Persons or individual subsistences, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit.
This is proved by the various passages referred to as substantiating the doctrine of
the Trinity. To denote these distinctions in the Godhead, Greek writers generally employed the
term hupostasis, while Latin authors used the term persona, and sometimes substantia.
Because the former was apt to be misleading and the latter was ambiguous, the Schoolmen
coined the word subsistentia. The variety of the terms used points to the fact that their
inadequacy was always felt. It is generally admitted that the word “person” is but an imperfect
expression of the idea. In common parlance it denotes a separate rational and moral individual,
possessed of self-consciousness, and conscious of his identity amid all changes. Experience
teaches that where you have a person, you also have a distinct individual essence. Every person
is a distinct and separate individual, in whom human nature is individualized. But in God there
are no three individuals alongside of, and separate from, one another, but only personal self-
distinctions within the Divine essence, which is not only generically, but also numerically, one.
Consequently many preferred to speak of three hypostases in God, three different modes, not
of manifestation, as Sabellius taught, but of existence or subsistence. Thus Calvin says: “By
person, then, I mean a subsistence in the Divine essence. — a subsistence which, while related
to the other two, is distinguished from them by incommunicable properties.”[Inst. I, XIII, 6] This
is perfectly permissible and may ward off misunderstanding, but should not cause us to lose
sight of the fact that the self-distinctions in the Divine Being imply an “I” and “Thou” and “He,”
in the Being of God, which assume personal relations to one another. Matt. 3:16; 4:1; John
1:18; 3:16; 5:20-22; 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-15.
c. The whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons.
This
means that the divine essence is not divided among the three persons, but is wholly with all its
perfection in each one of the persons, so that they have a numerical unity of essence. The