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If we therefore speak the Queen's English, we shall mean by `Three Persons in the
Godhead' offices, functions, guises and characters assumed in grace and love by the
One True, Infinite and Invisible God for the purpose of Creation, Redemption and the
ultimate consummation of the ages, `that God may be all in all'. Lloyd's Encyclopaedic
Dictionary puts the definition `an individual' seventh in the list, the earlier definitions
agreeing with those of the Oxford Dictionary. Here is the first definition:
(1)
That part in life which one plays.
"No man can put on a person and act a part; but his evil manners will peep through
the corners of his white robe" (Jeremy Taylor).
Archbishop Trench points out that when this old sense of the word is remembered,
greatly increased force is given to the statement that God is no respecter of `persons'.
The signification is that God cares not what part in life a person plays, in other words
what office he fills, but how he plays it. At the time this paper was being written, a friend
was preparing to undergo an operation. The malady from which he suffered had
influenced his temper and outlook, and we found ourselves saying, without any need of
explanation `When the operation is over, he may be a new person'. Archbishop Whately
in his book The 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
them 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