(January 18, 2021 at 10:33 pm)Grandizer Wrote: But what I was trying to get at is why the selectivity of which of these are Persons and which are just names?
I don't know!
Is it because something like the Good is an attribute, whereas the persons of the Trinity are not? Though this may just kick it down the road -- why is the Good an attribute and not a person...?
Quote: 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?
Here I think we're into the "it's just a mystery" portion of the argument.
As I recall, when they make a distinction between natural theology and revealed theology, the Trinity is the example they usually give of the latter. So as you know, natural theology is the part that can be proved through logic, and therefore grasped by human understanding, whereas revealed stuff like the Trinity can't. It can be described by humans but not understood, in the way that rats can't understand prime numbers (allegedly).
The obvious explanation for non-believers is that the Bible mentions the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit separately, and the concept of the Trinity was cobbled together later to assert that Christianity isn't as polytheistic as those things would make it appear.
I'm thinking that there were serious Christians, like Isaac Newton, who rejected the idea of the Trinity, for just those reasons.