TRITHEISM

Tritheism as such did not appear until the Middle Ages. In the sixth century, however, John Philoponus, a philosopher of Alexandria, prepared the way for Tritheism when he identified person with nature and taught that there were three natures in God and that there were still three persons in one God. In other words, the three divine persons participate in the divine nature as three men participate in human nature. He was condemned as a heretic in the Second Council of Constantinople (the fifth ecumenical council).[57]

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the controversy about universals affected questions about the Trinity in various ways. Roscellinus, the celebrated doctor of Nominalism, taught that the divine essence could not be common to three persons and that the three divine persons were three distinct realities or substances, in much the same way that three souls or three angels differ. Nevertheless, he said, the three divine persons form a certain unity inasmuch as they are endowed with one will and the same power.

Roscellinus arrived at this conclusion because of his Nominalism, according to which the universals have not even a fundamental existence in things, that is to say, the universals have no objective reference but are merely words adopted into our speech. Positivists and modern empiricists have returned to this view, refusing to admit any essential difference between intellectual and sensitive knowledge and reducing the idea to a composite image of the phantasm to which a common name has been joined. According to pure Nominalism, therefore, the universals do not exist in things even fundamentally; the only things that exist are the individuals. Thus humanity designates the aggregate of men and not human nature, which is specifically one. If, therefore, according to revelation, there are three divine persons, the Nominalists cannot conceive how they can have the same divine nature, especially a divine nature which is numerically one, nor do they admit one specific nature for all men. St. Anselm attacked the Nominalism of Roscellinus, and in 1092 it was condemned by the Synod of Soissons.[58]

In the eleventh century Gilbert Porretanus, who although he is often called a Nominalist is really a realist, inclined to Tritheism in another way by teaching that the divine relations are really distinct from the divine essence. Extreme realism believes that the universal exists formally apart from the thing, and consequently Gilbert placed real distinctions where they do not exist, for example, in man between the metaphysical grades of being, substantiality, corporeity, life, animality, rationality, unmindful of the fact that all these things are reduced to one comprehensive concept of man.

Similarly this extreme realism places a certain real distinction, or at least more than a virtual distinction, between the divine attributes, and also between the divine essence and the divine persons. It thus inclines to Tritheism because the "esse in" is multiplied in the divine persons and in the divine relations opposed to one another, while St. Thomas has shown that the "esse in" in the divine persons is not accidental but substantial and therefore is not multiplied.[59]

Gilbert Porretanus was condemned by the Council of Reims in 1148.[60] From his doctrine it would have followed that the divine relations would be accidents in God. St. Thomas' reply[61] is that in God, who is pure act, no accident is found, and the relations thus really distinguished from the divine substance like accidents cannot constitute persons. As we shall see below, the "esse in" of the relations in God is something substantial and therefore not really distinguished from the substance.

Thus Roscellinus and Gilbert Porretanus by different routes reached Tritheism by placing in God real distinctions which are not there. Finally, in the twelfth century Abbot Joachim of Calabria fell into Tritheism in an effort to correct Peter Lombard, whom he had misunderstood. He feared that the teaching of Peter Lombard would lead to a kind of quaternity inasmuch as the divine essence was neither the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost. Trying to avoid this error he fell into another: he taught that between the three divine persons only a moral unity existed, arising from the consent of the will, a unity such as exists between a group of Christians. Consequently the divine nature would not be unique or one numerically, but it would be multiplied. This error of Abbot Joachim was condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council: "We, however, with the approbation of the sacred council, believe and confess with Peter Lombard that the supreme entity is one, incomprehensible and ineffable indeed, which is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the three persons together and singly each of the three persons. Therefore in God only a Trinity is found and not a quaternity, since each of the three persons is that entity, namely, the divine essence."[62] In this definition the word "is" in the statement, "The divine essence is the Father, " indicates, as in every affirmative proposition, the real identity of the subject and the predicate. The divine essence is the Father without any real distinction; on the contrary the Father is not the Son and between the two persons is found a real distinction, a distinction which is antecedent to any consideration of the mind and based, as was more clearly expressed by the Council of Florence, on the opposition of relation.[63] In the Council of Florence, called to reconcile the schismatic Greeks to the Church, was formulated the principle which illumines the whole doctrine of the Trinity: "In God all things are one and the same where no opposition of relation exists." This opposition of relation exists between the divine persons themselves but not between the persons and the divine substance. The doctrine of the Church thus appears as the apex of a pyramid rising above the heresies opposed to each other which either deny the Trinity of the divine persons or the numerical unity of the divine nature. According to the judgment of the Church, these heresies are false in what they deny, whereas something of the truth remains in what they affirm. Whatever these false teachings affirm positively, such as the unity of nature and the Trinity of persons, is also affirmed by the Church.

It should be noted that in the nineteenth century, Gunther inclined to Tritheism when he defined personality as the consciousness of oneself. He thought that if God were conscious of Himself by His divine essence only one person would be in God. Accordingly he placed three distinct consciousnesses in God, distinguishing between the subject of the consciousness (the Father), the object of the consciousness (the Son), and the equality of both conscious of itself (the Holy Ghost). He arrived in this way at three intelligences. This error was condemned by Pius IX.[64]

Among the errors about the Trinity we must mention the theory of the Modernists, who declare that the dogma of the Trinity, like other dogmas, is a human invention, achieved by laborious effort and subject to continuous change and evolution.[65]

From this brief enumeration of the errors about the Trinity, we see not only the revealed truth as taught by the Church standing forth more clearly, preserving both the unity of the divine nature and the Trinity of the divine persons, but by reason of these errors the distinction between nature and person is greatly clarified. As has often been said, the great difficulty in determining this distinction arose from the difference between the Latin and Greek terms. In the Western Church, the Latin word persona (prosopon) at first meant a theatrical mask, worn by actors when impersonating famous individuals; later the term was used for those who held some dignified position (a personage), and finally it designated all men who are of their own right, that is, capable of rights, and thus persons were distinguished from things. More philosophically Boethius in the sixth century defined a person as "an individual substance with a rational nature."[66] Today we define a person as a free and intelligent subject.

In the Eastern Church, however, in the first centuries the terms "ousia" and "hypostasis" were used indiscriminately to designate substance and essence. This was the cause of many controversies and at the same time it was realized that "prosopon", with its etymological meaning of a theatrical mask, did not clearly express the real distinction between the divine persons. The Arians understood the term "hypostasis" to refer to the substance and declared that there were in God three subordinate substances. At length, at St. Athanasius' urging, the word "ousia" was accepted to mean nature and the word "hypostasis" to mean person. From this time the Greek "hypostasis" was equivalent to the Latin "persona", hence the expression hypostatic union to designate the union of two natures in the one person of the incarnate Word; similarly three "hypostases" in one nature were said to be in God. Later, among the Greek Fathers, St. Basil further determined the meaning of these words. He taught that "ousia" designated what was common ("to koinon") to individuals of the same species.[67] Even then the meaning was not clear because the nature assumed by the Word, although it is individual, is not a person. Therefore Leontius of Byzantium, to avoid confusing the individual humanity of Christ with His divine person, defined "hypostasis" as a substance not only individual but also separately existing of itself and truly incommunicable.[68]

St. Thomas perfected the definition of person when he said that a person is an individual substance with a rational nature, that is, incommunicable, existing of itself separately and operating separately of itself, of its own right.[69] Today commonly, as we have said, a person is defined as a free and intelligent subject, and this definition (analogically, yet properly) applies to the human person, the angelic person, and the divine persons, as will be seen more clearly below.

We find two tendencies among the Catholic doctors and theologians. The Greek Fathers and theologians, when explaining this mystery, generally began with the Trinity of persons as explicitly revealed in the New Testament, rather than with the unity of nature. The Latins, on the other hand, especially after the time of St. Augustine, generally started with the unity of nature, as stated in the tract on the one God, and went on to the Trinity of persons. Thus the two groups began from either extreme of the mystery and proceeded to the other and therefore they were met with opposing difficulties: the Greeks found difficulty in safeguarding the unity of nature, and the Latins had to be careful to safeguard those things which are proper to the persons.

Among the Latin Scholastics we find a notable difference caused by the controversy about universals, since some, like Scotus, placed between the divine essence and the persons a formal distinction, actual on the part of the thing, whereas the Nominalists made the distinction only verbal, such as exists between Tully and Cicero. The Thomists, however, and many other theologians called it a virtual distinction.