Why Only Three Persons In The Holy Trinity?

            The doctrine of the blessed Trinity is indeed complicated and construed as mysterious. This is not to say that the Trinitarian doctrine cannot be understood entirely.

            Rather, the complication, in my opinion, is this: it is an ongoing effort of our incorporeal (immaterial) mind dwelling in our corporeal (material) body and the universe, which constantly experiences an intellectual struggle while trying to comprehend the underlying schema of two opposing architectures (Corporeal vs. Incorporeal) inasmuch to understand the fullness of an uncaused, maximally great, incorporeal being, namely God, who is wholly Trinitarian in nature. However, this intellectual struggle could be conquered with the help of God Himself, who indwells us (cf. John 14:23).

            Thomistic philosopher Ed Feser offers a positive outlook, “...when Trinitarian theologians refer to the doctrine of the Trinity as a “mystery,” they do not mean that it is self-contradictory or unintelligible. Nor do they mean that there are no rational grounds for believing it. What they mean is that while it is perfectly consistent and intelligible in itself, our minds are too limited fully to comprehend it. And while, for that reason, the doctrine cannot be arrived at “from scratch” by purely philosophical arguments, we can be rationally justified in believing it on the basis of testimony, viz. the testimony of Jesus Christ, whose reliability is demonstrated by His resurrection...Furthermore, while human reason cannot fully grasp the Trinity even after it has been revealed, it can show that no attempts to prove the doctrine self-contradictory are successful...”¹

            Notwithstanding this backdrop, we can still contend with questions related to the Blessed Trinity. One such question is ‘Why are we limited to only three persons in the Trinity?’ Why can’t there be one, two, four, or more?   

            Medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas posited the following:

            1. Argument from ontology: It is ontologically impossible to have more than three persons in the Godhead of the Blessed Trinity:²

            “First, the usual way you get multiple things from one thing is by cutting it into pieces, as you might produce a temple's worth of marble pillars from a single slab of marble. But that's not how we get the three Divine persons: we aren't cut God into pieces. God is a single substance, and by His essence has no pieces; that was determined by Thomas' initial argument for the existence of God. So how do we get multiple persons? Here's Thomas' summary:

There cannot be more than three persons in God. For the divine persons cannot be multiplied by a division of their substance, but solely by the relation of some procession; and not by any sort of procession, but only by such as does not have its term in something outside of God.”

            God is an uncaused immaterial being. So God, eternally, is composed of three persons. Since God cannot change, and since God is perfect, it would be metaphysically impossible for God to have less or more than 3 persons.

            2. Argument from Perfection: Since God is perfect, HE lacks nothing. Hence, the presence of three persons in the Blessed Trinity construes perfection and since perfection lacks nothing, the Blessed Trinity has no need for less or more persons:³

             “Thomas now makes an argument from perfection: a thing is perfect of its kind if it lacks nothing that would make it more itself. Half-an-apple is half an apple; part of it is missing. And if a thing's nature is perfect, then there can't be more than one of it: the one thing of that kind must perfectly express its nature. This is true of the Son and the Spirit, so we can't have more than one of each.

Again: the perfect is that beyond which there is nothing. Hence a being that would tolerate anything of its own class to be outside itself, would fall short of absolute perfection. This is why things that are simply perfect in their natures are not numerically multiplied... But both the Son and the Holy Spirit must be simply perfect, since each of them is God, as we have shown. Therefore several Sons or several Holy Spirits are impossible.”

            So to conclude, the blessed Godhead (the Blessed Trinity) can only have three persons.

Endnotes:

¹http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/02/trinity-and-mystery.html ²https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crywoof/2015/11/todays-aquinas-why-a-trinity-why-not-a-quaternity/

³Ibid.

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