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| No Addition Can Be Made to the Nature of God.
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Chapter 8.—No Addition Can
Be Made to the Nature of God.
Since, therefore, the Father alone,
or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone, is as great as is the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together,616
| 616 [Each trinitarian person is as
great as the Trinity, if reference be had to the essence, but not
if reference be had to the persons. Each person has the entire
essence, and the Trinity has the entire essence. But each person
has the essence with only one personal characteristic; while the
Trinity has the essence with all three personal characteristics. No
trinitarian person is as comprehensive as the triune Godhead,
because he does not possess the two personal characteristics
belonging to the other two persons. The Father is God, but he is
not God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.—W.G.T.S.] | in no manner is He to be called
threefold. Forasmuch as bodies increase by union of themselves. For
although he who cleaves to his wife is one body; yet it is a
greater body than if it were that of the husband alone, or of the
wife alone. But in spiritual things, when the less adheres to the
greater, as the creature to the Creator, the former becomes greater
than it was, not the latter.617
| 617 [The addition of finite numbers,
however great, to an infinite number, does not increase the
infinite. Similarly, any addition of finite being to the Infinite
Being is no increase. God plus the universe is no larger an
infinite than God minus the universe. The creation of the universe
adds nothing to the infinite being and attributes of God. To add
contingent being to necessary being, does not make the latter any
more necessary. To add imperfect being to perfect being, does not
make the latter more perfect. To add finite knowledge to infinite
knowledge, does not produce a greater amount of knowledge. This
truth has been overlooked by Hamilton, Mansell, and others, in the
argument against the personality of the Infinite, in which the
Infinite is confounded with the All, and which assumes that the All
is greater than the Infinite—in other words, that God plus the
universe is greater than God minus the
universe.—W.G.T.S.] | For in those things which are not
great by bulk, to be greater is to be better. And the spirit of any
creature becomes better, when it cleaves to the Creator, than if it
did not so cleave; and therefore also greater because better.
“He,” then, that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit:”618
but yet the
Lord does not therefore become greater, although he who is
joined to the Lord does so. In God Himself, therefore when the
equal Son, or the Holy Spirit equal to the Father and the Son, is
joined to the equal Father, God does not become greater than each
of them severally; because that perfectness cannot increase. But
whether it be the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit, He is
perfect, and God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is perfect;
and therefore He is a Trinity rather than triple.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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