Most of Kevin's reply (Nature of Persons) to my soteriological sidebar on Trinitarian personhood is taken up with illustrating my seeming lack of either logic, consistency, or logical consistency. This may well be true of me, though I really don't think so, but the logic, consistency or logical consistency one exhibits must be true to one's subject matter. One cannot demand of "God talk" the sort of logical consistency that one demands of mathematical formulae, since God is not number. Nor can one demand of these discussions the sort of syllogistic one rightly expects of rationalist proofs. The Christian God is not the God of the philosophers, so, for example, absolute simplicity cannot be ascribed to him. Indeed, it is not so much a matter of logic per se, but more a matter of the premises with which one begins. Non-Christians may look at the conciliar dogma surrounding the person of Jesus Christ, that he was fully (or perfect) God and fully (or perfect) man, that he had two natures and two wills in one Person, and think "Illogical." But if one examines the arguments surrounding the reality of the Incarnation, one will see a thoroughgoing consistent logic being applied to the premises. In these discussions, I think, it is not so much a question of the logic as it is a question regarding the premises.
Be that as it may, very little of Kevin's post criticizing my account of Trinitarian personhood actually deals substantively with the content of my own post, and, more particularly, the problems his own Trinitarian statements give rise to. In fact, the problems continue in the instances that he spends discussing God's Person.
Kevin claims that I have misconstrued his claims.
Clifton goes on to describe his views of the Trinity as taken from Oration XXIX by Gregory of Nazianzus. I have no real disagreent with this Oration and am left wondering what it has to do with this discussion.. That is, until I remember that Clifton is accusing me of subsuming personhood into essence. But this is not the case.
Now I readily admit that I have taken Kevin to be committing this identification. But I have done so on the substance of his nature-personhood explication. He is claiming, and has claimed consistently, that persons are their natures. Indeed, he even went so far as to agree with my assertion that Personhood exceeds essence, but then apparently contradicted himself in saying that it was in the nature of the Trinitarian Persons to do so. So it is not clear to me which it is: Do the Persons exceed their essence; or are they subsumed within it since that is what their nature is, to exceed their nature? In other words, it seems that on this configuration, Kevin is promoting some sort of modalism. All that God is, is his nature, which just happens to be Persons, who themselves are identified with their nature.
Kevin tries to clear things up:
I suspect Clifton believes that it is because, in his own view, Person is prior to essence. I argue that neither is the case but that both are equally ultimate- which is not to say that they are absolutely identical.
By Person being prior to essence, I, of course, mean to assert the monarche of the Father. That it is the Father who is the single cause of the Godhead. The Father's priority is aetiological.
Now, insofar as Kevin describes God's Persons and essence as equally ultimate--that God is not a Person without essence, or an essence without Person--I have no quibbles with it. In fact, he even goes on to say that
persons and essence cannot be separated. When God begets the Son, he does so both as to his person and as to his divine nature. The one cannot exist without the other. And even if we see the Father, who is a Person, as the cause of the Godhead, he is not a Person who exists apart from his own nature. The Father does not exist prior to the divine essence, but begetting and procession are eternal. It is the nature of the Persons of the Trini