We have love, power, wisdom. God is love, power, wisdom. So we come to the first great axiom about God: In God all things are the same; an infinite being is necessarily a simple one. In Deo omnia sunt unum. That is all philosophy can tell us. Revelation tells us that there are, however, real distinctions in God and three really distinct Persons. The schoolmen now consider the difference between two categories of things — absolute things and relations. Absolute things are perfections; they concern the being in whom they are. Goodness makes a being good, and so on. Relations are not perfections; they concern, not the being in whom they inhere, but something else. Their whole nature is not to add anything in themselves, but only to connote the state of their subject with regard to something else. If I say, for instance: "This man is white," I say something about his own quality. If I say: "This man is equal to that one," I say nothing positive or absolute about him. I only establish how he stands with regard to the other one. I have stated no entity in him,[1] but only his relation to another. Now in God all absolute and positive things are identified with the Divine nature. But the opposite extremes of a relation cannot metaphysically be identified with each other, or there would be no relation. If, then, there are relations in God, these mutual relations must establish real distinctions. We should never have thought such relations possible, but Revelation has taught us that they exist. There is the relation of Paternity and "Filiatio," and the relation of active and passive "Spiratio." These relations are also identified with the Divine essence, but they necessarily involve real distinctions between themselves. If there is real Paternity and "Filiatio," there must be a really distinct Father and Son. The distinction between God the Father and God the Son is constituted solely and entirely by this relation. In all absolute things they are identified. Their wisdom, power, goodness, are the same thing; these qualities are simply the one Divine essence.[2]
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THE ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH
