De Moor V:5 — The Three Modes of Subsistence in the One Divine Essence {{slight edits for readability/flow}} There are three modes of subsistence belonging to this one essence; or, more precisely, there are three true Persons, which are abstractly incommunicable modes of subsistence belonging to the Divine Essence. These are relatively and terminatively distinct from the Essence and relate to it as something more absolute and broader in a certain measure. The Essence is regarded as absolute, to which a certain relation is added by the mode of subsistence proper to each Person. Under that relation this Person, and not another, possesses the Essence, and by which these Persons relate to one another — yet in such a way that the personal character of each Person is terminated in that relation and cannot be predicated of another. If one should object that a predicative relation is an accidental property, which is inconsistent with God, and that personality is not an accidental property but a mode, it cannot be denied that the term Father asserts a true relation to the Son, and vice versa. Hence, in order to exclude all imperfect concepts, we may call this relation transcendental and hyperphysical. Here, Essence is as what is broader in a certain measure, and Personality as what is narrower: the Essence is communicable and actually common to the three Persons, while Personality is proper to each Person and incommunicable to the others. Our author allows this distinction between the Persons and the Essence to be expressed in various ways, provided the terms employed are not pressed with undue rigor, nor the imperfections of finite things applied to this mystery. It may be called: 1. A distinction of reason of having reasoned (rationis ratiocinatae) — that is, one which is not merely conceived by reasoning reason (a ratione ratiocinante), but at the same time has a foundation in the thing concerning which we reason. 2. Formal, because by that mode of subsistence superadded to the Divine Essence, the Essence is formally constituted in the being of a Person. 3. Modal, whereby the mode is said to be distinguished from the thing; just as we called the personal properties, by which the divine Persons are distinguished, modes of subsistence belonging to the Divine Essence. Thus the Persons are distinguished from the Essence and from each other, not really or essentially (like a thing from a thing), but modally (like a mode from a thing, and one mode of a thing from another). Hence, our author hardly allows this distinction to be called real, unless bare truth is noted in opposition to fiction, and it is signified that the divine Persons do not differ in reason alone, yet not therefore essentially. That is what those among us who here call the distinction real mean. They are unwilling that we should speak scholastically of a greater real distinction (the sort that exists between a thing and a thing), as if in the Trinity there were one thing and another, or one and another Essence, whereby the perfectly simple unity of the divine Essence would fall. Rather, they understand a lesser real distinction, which is between a thing and the mode of a thing, or between the modes themselves, and which exactly coincides with a modal distinction. Compare Eckhardus’ Fasciculum Controversiarum cum Calvino, chapter II, question VI, pages 44–50; Nicolaus Arnoldi’s Scopas dissolutas Eckhardi, chapter II, question VI, pages 11–13; Van Mastricht’s Gangraenam Novitatum Cartesianarum, posterior section, chapter XVIII, §§ 6–11, pages 328–335, where with Maresius, Systemate Theologico, locus III, § 20, note a, he disputes against Wittich that a distinction real, modal, or of reason of having reasoned is not to be admitted here, but only personal, or by the personal properties; just as the Persons are nevertheless distinguished from each other rather than from the Essence. For in the disputation with the Socinians, if one would stand in the truth, one will always be obliged to explain a personal distinction of this sort with reference to mode. By this discourse of Mastricht and Maresius is also sufficiently supplied what may be replied to Lampe, who likewise rejects a modal distinction among the Divine Persons as distinct modes of subsistence, as if this were the ancient heresy of the Sabellians, and substitutes a personal distinction as something greater, implying the proper intellect and will of the individual Divine Persons — although he testifies elsewhere that he acknowledges the Essence of the Three Persons to be one with respect to number. From what has been previously said it is evident that Person regarded in the concrete does not bespeak a bare mode of subsistence, but the Essence together with a peculiar mode of subsistence, through which the Essence is terminated in this or that Person; whereas Personality regarded in the abstract is an incommunicable mode of subsisting in the same Essence. Hence it follows of itself that the Divine Persons are distinguished from one another by the mode of existence (τρόπον ὑπάρξεως), and that no other distinction obtains between Essence and Persons, and between one Person and another, except a modal distinction. If one calls this distinction personal, one speaks less determinatively. A personal distinction also obtains between the various angels and men, as many individuals sharing in the same (with respect to species) angelic and human nature. But if the Socinians should ask whether one conceives of the personal distinction between the three Divine Persons in the same manner, and one gives assent, they will with good reason call one a Tritheist, and the mystery of the Trinity will be ruined. If one rightly answers in the negative, how will one explain what one understands by a personal distinction in the divine, and how a personal distinction in the divine and in creatures might differ, except by returning to a modal distinction, and by showing that a multiplication of numeric essence does indeed obtain in the multiple persons of angels and men (since the same, with respect to species, angelic or human nature is communicated to three substances diverse in number), whereas in the divine Persons, sharers of the same (with respect to number) divine Essence, there is only a distinction in the diverse mode of subsisting in the same nature, or of possessing the same (with respect to number) nature, and that hence no progress is able to be made here beyond the modal distinction. Moreover, just as the Divine Essence bespeaks an infinite spiritual substance, furnished with the faculties of intellect, will, and power, and infinite perfection; so this Essence, one with respect to number, with intellect, will, power, and infinite perfection numerically the same, which the individual Divine Persons enjoy, agrees with and is common to them. Does he not speak incoherencies and contradictions (ἀσύστατα) who acknowledges one substance or Divine Essence with respect to number, and at the same time affirms that among the three Divine Persons a distinction obtains more than modal, called personal, by which intellect and will as proper are applicable to the individual Divine Persons? Let others judge. Compare the end of § 8 of this chapter, and chapter XVIII, § 18, where one will find the various passages of Lampe to which I have regard here also cited. Lampe would be greatly deceived if he should confound the orthodox opinion concerning three distinct modes of subsistence in the numerically one Divine Essence with the position of the Modalists, as they are called, who explain the three Divine Persons by three diverse modes of thinking. Such are taken for the more recent Sabellians and are referred to the Unitarians, since one and the same Person is able to have the thoughts of a Judge, a Mediator, and a Comforter. See Buddeus’ Institutiones Theologiæ dogmaticæ, book II, chapter I, § 54, tome 1, pages 417–418, and his Isagogen ad Theologiam universam, book II, chapter VII, § 10, tome 2, page 1354b. Compare also what Spanheim, in Historia ecclesiastica, Century III, chapter VII, § 3, column 749, notes on Christophorus Sandius concerning the catholic doctrine of the consubstantial Trinity (ὁμοουσίου) turned into Sabellianism, to which similarly tend Curcellæus, Quaternione Dissertationum adversus Maresium, Dissertation I, § 119, opera, page 877, and Vorstius, Exegese Apologetica, chapter IX, pages 37–38. Attend also to the caution of Ambrose, whereby, if one wishes to preserve the consubstantiality (ὁμοουσίον) of the numerically one divine Essence, he teaches that a recognition of several that as individuals have their own wills is to be far removed (de Filii Divinitate et Consubstantialitate contra Arianos, chapter II, opera, tome 4, column 277): “Or, if He is true God and not of the Father, then there are two having their own wills individually,” etc. This thesis concerning three true Persons in the one divine Essence is to be maintained against the error that has especially been known by the name of Sabellianism. The name was taken from Sabellius, a Pentapolitan African, who spread in the third century, after the same had already been disseminated by Simon Magus in the first century, and by Noëtus and Praxeas in the second century: that the Father, Son, and Spirit are merely three names (τρεῖς ὀνομασίας), relations, or offices, but not three hypostases (ὑποστάσεις); and that there is only one Person or hypostasis in God, the Son-Father (υἱοπάτορος). They wished God to be called Father in heaven, the Son on earth, and the Holy Spirit in creatures, to the extent that He exerts His power in them. But because they acknowledged only one Person in God, they supposed that what happened to the Son also happened to the Father; that is, they said that the Father, under the notion of a Son, was also born of the Virgin, and afterwards suffered, from which absurd thesis they were also known as Patripassians. See Epiphanius, Hæresi XLII or LXII, opera, tome I, pages 513–520; Hæresi XXI, page 55; Hæresi XXXVII or LVII, pages 479–488; Augustine, de Hæresibus, chapters XLI, I, XXVI, and Danaeus’ notes on him; Spanheim, Historia Ecclesiastica, Century III, chapter VII, § 3, columns 748–749; Century I, chapter XIV, § 2, column 574; Century II, chapter VI, column 647. Against whom, among other arguments, he alleges that one Person of the Deity is very frequently found speaking to or concerning another Person, with relation to His personal property (Psalm 2:7; Matthew 3:17; John 15:26, etc.). Pierre Poiret attempts to excuse Sabellius and to enervate his doctrines, as if the contention between the Sabellians and the orthodox were merely a verbal dispute, with Sabellius merely refusing to acknowledge three Persons (that is, three individual substances) because thus he would have professed Tritheism. But by others it is believed that Poiret himself is not far removed from the error of the Sabellians: while he does indeed admit the language of Person, and profess that there are three hypostases or Persons in the divine Essence, he does so only in this sense, that this is the same as if one should establish three mere relations, habits, respects, or qualities in the divinity. See Walch’s Miscellanea Sacra, book III, Exercitation VIII, § 5, pages 736–737. Just how far the blasphemous doctrine of Servetus agrees with this ancient heresy, see in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, book I, chapter XIII, § 22, opera, tome 6, and likewise in his operibus, tome 7, folio 592, etc.; add Pictet’s Syllabum Controversiarum, book I, chapter XI, pages 79–81. That Servetus and his followers are to be held as neoteric Samosatenians, Walch contends, Miscellaneis Sacris, book I, Exercitation V, pages 122 and following. The wicked blasphemies with which Servetus hostilely pursued the doctrine of the Trinity, see in Hoornbeeck’s Apparatus ad Controversiam Socinianam, page 18. The doctrine of Hobbes concerning the Trinity is also to be referred to Sabellianism, which Cocquius confutes in his Anatome Hobbesianismi, locus VI, chapter XIII, pages 127–133. Moreover, it appears that to this same class of errors concerning the Holy Trinity is to be referred a conception of this mystery which was forged both by Pierre Poiret, just now mentioned, and Wilhelmus Deurhof, concerning God knowing and loving Himself, in which the Trinity would consist, while the latter says that he who speaks of three distinct Persons in one Essence explains the Trinity in a monstrous manner. See Taco Hajo van den Honert’s Veras Dei Vias, part II, book V, chapter I, § 21, pages 774–792; Deurhof’s Leer en Eer verdeedigt, pages 72–92, 136, 137. → → fromreformationtoreformation… → →

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