Against the classical theist view of the "person" of the Trinity

In effect we find in [Marius - DHC] Victorinus a further specification of the energein katharon of the Anonymous Commentary [on Pamenides -DHC]. This energein now turns out to be esse, the unlimited and uncircumscribed being of the Father, from which is derived all the limited and circumscribed being (ὄν) found in the Son. Such esse is anything but “being” conceived as a static condition of existence; it is a kind of inwardly directed activity, containing implicitly life and intelligence as well as existence. In thinking itself it manifests itself as what it is, giving rise to the triad of ese, vivere, and intellegere – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Oddly enough, then, despite all the accretions of Neoplatonism, we are not too far from the self-thinking thought of Aristotle’s Prime Mover. The divine self-intellection remains the activity par excellence, the one that precedes all others, giving rise by virtue of its necessary intrinsic structure to the intelligible order and plurality of the world. (David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom, 115)

Whatever its shortcomings and its difficult and sharply dialectical style, the Mystagogy makes clear the basic Byzantine objection to the Latin doctrine of the Trinity: that it understands God as a single and philosophically simple essence, in which personal or hypostatic existence is reduced to the concept of mutual relations between the three Persons. (John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical trends and doctrinal themes, 60)

In disputes over the doctrine of the Trinity, classical theists often claim that we should not import the "modern" ideas of personhood into the Trinity. So what is a person of the Trinity? Well, according to Thomas and Thomists, nothing more than the relations between the persons it seems. The primary focus is the one divine essence, and the persons are the differentiating relations, and nothing more. But how are those persons actually "persons"? Appeal to "mystery" does not help their case, because "mystery" excuses the super-rational, not the irrational. "Analogy" works only when one can show how the analogy works, otherwise the "analogy" is false. Classical theism runs around and around in circles, always ready to attack others with labels of heresy ("subordinationism," "tritheism," etc), but, like Mathew Barrett's book, empty vesssels do indeed make the most noise.

Perhaps a better way to look at the issue is to step away from the heat of the moment and look at how Trinitarianism came to be defined in history. And what one sees does not look good for the Western church. There is nothing wrong with focusing on the one essence, if one focuses at the same time on the three persons. Nevertheless, from the shift in the meaning of energein towards the Latin esse, it seems that a prima facie case can be made that the Western Church has collapsed the emerging category of "energy" into the category of "being." The "energies" of God in the West was collapsed into the category of "actuality." Aristotle's "thought thinking itself" was reformed in the Western church, with the triad of "ese, vivere, and intellegere" reforged into the one being of the divine.

The picture that emerges from this Latin understanding of the Trinity seems to be one being in three instantiations. What does this look like? While limited, the image that comes to my mind is that of Reverse Flash with two of his time remnants. In DC comics and in the Arowverse, speedsters have the ability to create multiple time remnants of themselves, exact same beings (same ontology) as the speedsters but who are disconnected from their original timelines and thus they exist side by side with their same being counterparts. The image that comes to mind is that of Eobard Thawn somehow creating two time remnants in eternity and the three of them exist for all time, if that could happen. This is not to suggest that the Latin Trinity is Eobard Thawne, but rather that the Reverse Flash with two time remnants is an image (an analogy) of how one being can be instantiated into three "persons."

This analogy should show us clearly why the view that the persons of the Trinity are mere relations is just ridiculous. Eobard Thawn, Thawne's first remnant, and Thawne's second remnant are not three persons, even though they have the ability to act differently despite their one essence. Instantiations of one being are not persons, and can never be persons. Persons, as the Greeks know to be the case, have their individual hypostasis (ὑποστασις) or personhood. Speaking of which, it is much more likely that the Greeks know their language and its meaning more than the Latins know the original Greek meaning of hypostasis. When the Greeks maintained that the persons of the Trinity are real persons, without all the qualifiers like "we should not import modern notions of personhood into the Trinity," it is much better to follow the Greeks than the Latins who are hardly experts on the Greek language.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, which seems to have a better doctrine of God, the one God is present in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person of the Trinity is a person in the fullest sense of the term, with his own individual personality. While not necessarily taking the Eastern view concerning the filioque, it is clear that the East has some legitimate concerns over it, and behind it all lies a much more developed theology of the Trinity than Thomas Aquinas' view could ever be. It is certainly revealing that modalism and unitarianism is a constant danger in Western Trinitarianism, a sign that Western Trinitarianism, with its deficient view of personhood in reducing the persons to mere relations, has a corroded foundation that opens the way to these trinitarian heresies.