(January 18, 2021 at 9:32 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I'll take a guess on this one.
I think it's because many of the terms are different names for the same thing. So God is Being, which is one name for him. He's also the Good, which is another name for the same thing. (How all of these things end up being only one big thing in the end is also a big discussion.)
Or strictly speaking, to differentiate terms like "good" from what we think of as their meaning in this world, Dionysius uses the term "over-good," "over-being," etc.
I suspect that the reason human beings need these different terms is just good old Neoplatonic limited perception. Since we are embodied and live in division, whereas God is one, we are not currently able to see all the different names as being the single thing they are. So while the trinity is three-in-one, the names are many, yet merely different labels for the same thing.
Or I may be wrong.
Yeah, I remember from Feser's book that these are supposed to be different ways of looking at God. God is Being, Good, Truth, etc, all in one. But what I was trying to get at is why the selectivity of which of these are Persons and which are just names? Furthermore, how is the distinction of Persons in God reconciled with the notion that God is strictly simple? Isn't there not supposed to be any distinction within God as understood by theologians like Aquinas?
