Whether This Term "Person" Can Be Common to the Three Persons?
Objection 1: It would seem that this term "person" cannot be common to
the three persons. For nothing is common to the three persons but the
essence. But this term "person" does not signify the essence directly.
Therefore it is not common to all three.
Obj. 2: Further, the common is the opposite to the incommunicable.
But the very meaning of person is that it is incommunicable; as
appears from the definition given by Richard of St. Victor (Q. 29, A.
3, ad 4). Therefore this term "person" is not common to all the three
persons.
Obj. 3: Further, if the name "person" is common to the three, it is
common either really, or logically. But it is not so really;
otherwise the three persons would be one person; nor again is it so
logically; otherwise person would be a universal. But in God there is
neither universal nor particular; neither genus nor species, as we
proved above (Q. 3, A. 5). Therefore this term 'person' is not common
to the three.
_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (De Trin. vii, 4) that when we ask,
"Three what?" we say, "Three persons," because what a person is, is
common to them.
_I answer that,_ The very mode of expression itself shows that this
term "person" is common to the three when we say "three persons"; for
when we say "three men" we show that "man" is common to the three.
Now it is clear that this is not community of a real thing, as if one
essence were common to the three; otherwise there would be only one
person of the three, as also one essence.
What is meant by such a community has been variously determined by
those who have examined the subject. Some have called it a community
of exclusion, forasmuch as the definition of "person" contains the
word "incommunicable." Others thought it to be a community of
intention, as the definition of person contains the word "individual";
as we say that to be a species is common to horse and ox. Both of
these explanations, however, are excluded by the fact that "person" is
not a name of exclusion nor of intention, but the name of a reality.
We must therefore resolve that even in human affairs this name
"person" is common by a community of idea, not as genus or species,
but as a vague individual thing. The names of genera and species, as
man or animal, are given to signify the common natures themselves, but
not the intentions of those common natures, signified by the terms
genus or species. The vague individual thing, as "some man,"
signifies the common nature with the determinate mode of existence of
singular things--that is, something self-subsisting, as distinct from
others. But the name of a designated singular thing signifies that
which distinguishes the determinate thing; as the name Socrates
signifies this flesh and this bone. But there is this
difference--that the term "some man" signifies the nature, or the
individual on the part of its nature, with the mode of existence of
singular things; while this name "person" is not given to signify the
individual on the part of the nature, but the subsistent reality in
that nature. Now this is common in idea to the divine persons, that
each of them subsists distinctly from the others in the divine nature.
Thus this name "person" is common in idea to the three divine persons.
Reply Obj. 1: This argument is founded on a real community.
Reply Obj. 2: Although person is incommunicable, yet the mode itself
of incommunicable existence can be common to many.
Reply Obj. 3: Although this community is logical and not real, yet it
does not follow that in God there is universal or particular, or
genus, or species; both because neither in human affairs is the
community of person the same as community of genus or species; and
because the divine persons have one being; whereas genus and species
and every other universal are predicated of many which differ in
being.
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