Elements of logic has an appendix illustrating certain terms which are peculiarly liable to be used ambiguously. One

of these terms is the word `person':

`PERSON, in its ordinary use at present, invariably implies a numerically distinct substance. Each man is one

person, and can be but one. It has, also, a peculiar theological sense in which we speak of "three Persons" of the

blessed Trinity. It was used thus probably by our Divines as a literal, or perhaps etymological rendering of the

Latin word "persona"'.

The Archbishop quotes from Dr. Wallis, a mathematician and logician, saying `That which makes these

expressions (viz. respecting the Trinity) seem harsh to some of these men, is because they have used themselves to

fancy that notion only of the word person, according to which three men are accounted three persons, and these three

persons to three men ... ' The word person (persona) is originally a Latin word, and does not properly signify a man

(so that another person must needs imply another man): for then the word homo would have served'. `Thus the

same man may at once sustain the person of a king and a father, if he be invested with regal and paternal authority.

Now because the King and the Father are for the most part not only different persons and different men also, hence

it comes to pass that another person is sometimes supposed to imply another man; but not always, nor is that the

proper sense of the word. It is Englished in our dictionary by the state, quality or condition whereby one man differs

from another; and so, as the condition alters, the person alters, though the man be the same'. Nearly all who contend

for the doctrine of the Trinity maintain that God is essentially and from all eternity Three Persons, but if we use the

word person in its original meaning, it will indicate character, office, function, temporarily assumed in time and can

be spoken of as beginning, or being limited by time or space, of being subject, of suffering, dying, without intruding

such conceptions into the realm of the Eternal, the Absolute or the Unconditional. Our problems begin when we

transfer the idea of `persons' from the realm of the manifest and the ages, to the realm of the timeless, the essential

and the eternal. Reverting to the definitions given in Lloyd's dictionary, we read:

(2) A human being represented in fiction or on the stage, a character.

(3) External appearance, bodily form or appearance, as in Hamlet -`If it assume my noble father's person'.

(4) Human frame, body; as `cleanly in person'.

(5) A human being; a being possessed of personality; a man, a human creature.

(6) A human being, as distinguished from an animal, or inanimate object.

(7) An individual; one, a man.

(8) A term applied to each of the beings in the Godhead.

(9) The parson or rector of a parish.

We have so lost the early meaning of the word `person' that some of the arguments of the opening centuries of

Christian discussion sound strange in our ears.

We see that the emphasis is upon the assumed character and not essential being, except when the dictionary

gives the usual theological usage and speaks of `three beings' in the Godhead which must inevitably lead at last to

the conception of `three Gods' however the fatal step is circumscribed. We will continue our examination of these

vital themes in the next chapter.

The Creeds, and the Athanasian Creed in particular, are the products of controversy, of attempts to define and

safeguard the truth, to refute error and preserve the truth intact for all time. In such an atmosphere, there is always

the danger of overstatement, of pushing a truth to extremes in the attempt to emphasize its worth, or to safeguard it

from corruption. To appreciate the reason for the language employed in the Athanasian Creed, one would need to be

acquainted with the heresies of Arians, Macedonians, Apollinarians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Socinians, Sabellians

and many others. When we perceive that this was the atmosphere in which the creeds were formed, we can well

expect that on many occasions men with the best intentions will be found `putting out the hand, to stay the ark of