An explanation of 'one essence and three Persons'

The original Korean text: https://blog.naver.com/stevision/222950530956

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Let's sort out and gather up the commonalities of all billions of people in the world. Then you will have one prototype of humans. You can call it 'the human nature (the human essence)'. By comparison with this human prototype, you can judge whether or not a creature is a human being.

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Excluding human spirit, you can define a human body as a human being. Then the human nature is 'a living being that has various organs which are made of material matter into which some energy has transformed'. (According to the theory of relativity, the material matter is energy.)

 

Philosopher Plato called such a human prototype a human Idea, and said that the high sky was the place where there were such Ideas, a place distinguished from this world. To him, an Idea is not just a concept, but a thing that really exists somewhere. This world is variable world of phenomena, while the sky (maybe the heaven) is the eternal and unchanging world of Ideas. Things on earth are but copies of the Ideas of the sky (the prototypes of the things on earth).

 

Aristotle didn't think that the Universals, that is the Ideas from Plato's point of view, were things existing themselves in the sky apart from the things of the world, but he thought they existed in the things of the world. A Universal in a thing is the nature (the essence) of the thing. He defined an ousia as 'a thing (a concrete and independent thing) that realized its essence in itself'. We may call this ousia a substance. He said that the matter and the form of a thing were united into an ousia. Therefore without big distortion, we can say that a form of a thing is 'the Idea of the thing' that is united with the matter of the thing.

 

Let's apply this existence system to us humans. A human being defined above would be a human substance; and the matter of this substance would be, according to the theory of relativity, the energy, and the form of the substance would be 'the structures and the arrangements of the atoms of the body and those of the organs of the body, and the interactions of those atoms and organs.'

 

Peter and Paul are two human beings for they are two complete human substances having a complete human nature (a complete humanity).

 

​Now let's think about God. It is very blasphemous, but I'd like to apply the above existence system to God to help you understand God.

 

Suppose that there is 'God's nature (or God's essence, the divinity), which may be the sum of the attributes and characteristics of God' compared to 'man's nature (or the prototype of humans)'. We confess that God the Father has a perfect divinity, and God the Son has a perfect divinity, and so does God the Holy Spirit. Therefore, in principle, all these three are fully qualified to be 'a God-ousia, or a God-substance'. However, if we define the kind (the category) of their existence as ousia or substance, it means that they are three separate Gods, which is tritheism.

 

So Christianity defines the God as the Trinity. It refers to 'one substance and three hypostases', in Latin way, and to 'one ousia and three Persons', in Greek way. To the question, How many Gods are there?, Christianity answers that there is only one God, that is, only one God-substance. And to the question, What then are the three Persons?, Christianity answers that the category of the existence of each Person is hypostasis. A hypostasis (of the Trinity) is a Godself (a Person) who has complete divinity and can exercise complete divine power and function. It's not a mere concept of personality, but a God-person with a complete substantiality of God. That's why I suggest that we define a hypostasis of the God as 'a Personal substance'. Therefore we can say that the only God has three divine Selves, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, at a time (and always). The only God Jehovah exists as the Trinity.

 

Occasionally, some people express the Trinity as 'one essence and three Persons', and say that God has three Persons and one nature, and that God is one because the three Persons have one nature. But it's not a good explanation of the Trinity. Even all human individuals share only one human nature, yet they are all individual human substances.

 

Essence has two representative meanings, nature and substance. The above essence originally refers to one ousia or one substance, so it must have meant 'one substance'. And each Person is not an abstract concept but a real divine Self with God-personality.

 

​(When you access this blog, the original blog, remaining at its original place, generates its own being on your computer also. Then the blog is one, even when it puts its being at two places at the same time. The two blogs, the original and the generated, are not two separate blogs, but intrinsically one blog. The substance of this blog is one, but it puts its two hypostases at two places simultaneously.)

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