Three Gods

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Yeaton Clifton quoted from my previous message:
>> Certainly Augustine in _De Trinitate_ explained the Godhead as having
>> personal, relational distinctions incompatible with our monarchian view.
>> Yet, it's interesting that his analogies explaining the Trinity were drawn
>> between the internal nature of God and the multiple internal workings of
>> one human person's mind. He was wary of analogies that might suggest the
>> idea of three gods (and warned that all analogies were but feeble attempts
>> to understand and explain God's nature). 

And responded:
>This comment is suprisingly critical of Augustines insight and his genius
>(neither of which I belive are challanged by most oneness or Trinitarian
>belivers)....
>Barring the question of whether God is Trinity, I don't find Augustine's
>comments on the Godhead feeble; infact I suggest you read the book over.


Actually, I was trying to point out that we may we have more common ground
with Augustine than is generally acknowledged. His concept of "persons" in
the Godhead was not analagous to individual human persons. He carefully
guarded against tritheistic analogies. I wrote more about this is my
response to Timothy Litteral [Thu, 10 Jul; Subject: Re: Three Gods].

I was not calling Augustine's arguments feeble -- it was Augustine himself
who said his analogies were weak, in the sense that they fell so far short
in trying to describe the nature of a God whose grandeur, in its totality,
transcends human comprehension.

As Prof. Richard Lints has written:
	Augustine went so far as to affirm at the end of his
	very lengthy and weighty treatise, "I venture to acknowledge
	openly that I have said nothing worthy of the ineffability of
	that highest Trinity among all these things that I have already
	said, but confess rather that its sublime knowledge has been too
	great for me, and that I am unable to reach to it."...

	Augustine has been chided in modern times for supposing that his
	"psychological trinity" matched exactly the divine Trinity.
	Augustine never made any such claim and often expressly warned
	against reading his work in this way.

>The three persons (or three substances or three
>hypostysis) are defined by Augustine and Aquinas and Anthasius by how
>they relate to each other so they are as much three distinct beings as you
>or I

I cannot agree here. As mentioned earlier, Augustine specifically avoided
comparisons of the Godhead with three human people. In no way can three
human individuals literally be one in their essential nature.

While I do believe the notion of personal, relational distinctions within
the Godhead was a departure from the biblical revelation, I must still
acknowledge that these theologians clearly taught that the substance, the
essential nature of God, is indivisibly One.

In another message [Tue, 08 Jul; Subject: Re: Praying to Triune God], I
pointed out that even some prominent Oneness proponents believed there is
an intrinsic threeness to the one nature of God. Kenneth Reeves even
teaches the likelihood of internal communication within the Godhead, which
might seemingly allow the *possibility* of relational distinctions
*similar* to Augustine's "persons."

There's a story that Augustine was walking along the seashore one day,
thinking deeply about the Godhead, when he came across a young boy playing
with a seashell. The boy would fill the shell with water, then pour it into
a hole he had made in the sand. When Augustine asked what he was doing, the
boy answered, "I'm going to pour the sea into that hole."

"Ah," said Augustine to himself, "that is what I have been trying to do.
Standing at the ocean of infinity, I have attempted to grasp it with my
finite mind." [End]

Almighty God, in the fullness of His glorious, eternal essence is utterly
beyond human comprehension. What a wonder that He chose to make Himself
known to us, to the degree our minds can grasp Him, and to identify fully
with humanity in the Son of God, even to the point of death. Though His
ways and thoughts are infinitely above my own, I'm ever-thankful for the
simplicity of calling in faith on the Lord Jesus, knowing that He alone is
my God and Savior, whose love is without measure.

Cary Robison