What is a person? Could you actually give a definition of “person?” Is this just a simple idea that I’m about to make complicated for you with some philosophical follow up questions, or is there something more? The dictionary may define a person as something like “a human being as regarded as an individual.” But if you think about it, this doesn’t tell you much about the nature of personhood, and as a result this definition leaves you unable to explain basic truths that Christians believe.
For example, angels are persons, and they are not human beings. But they would not be persons by the definition “a human being regarded as an individual.” Indeed, if God is Tri-personal, then we need a definition of personhood that extends beyond the human. You might try some other definition that looks at a person as a being with certain capacities–intelligence, rationality, morality, social interactions, etc. Carl Trueman has repeatedly observed at Mortification of Spin that the popular conception of personhood is tied to a psychological concept of a being that experiences consciousness, self-awareness, etc. These kinds of definitions work for distinguishing human persons, but they run into problems when we deal with the Trinity.
Christians believe that God is one Being in three Persons, one existence with three subsistences. What we call God’s attributes have to do with his being. So holiness, mercy, righteousness, omniscience, omnipotence, love, eternality–all the attributes of God pertain to God’s being, and as such are equally true of the Persons who share equally of that same Being. Think about it this way: could God the Father be angry at something when Jesus as God the Son is not? This would split the Trinity! How could we then have only one God? So attributes have to do with a single Being. The unity of God depends on the shared Being of the Trinity.
What, then, is a Person? In the Trinity, personhood cannot be a unique psychological consciousness. Any rational thought of God, any will of God, the decrees of God, etc., must be equally ascribed to all the Persons of God since they are functions of God’s unitary Being. Consider the issue of will. Would it be possible for the Father to will one thing but the Son another? No; it cannot be. There is only one will of God: throughout the Bible, we never read of the wills of God but of the will of God. Will, then, pertains to the Being, not the Person.
There are three distinctions we see in Scripture between the Persons of the Trinity: their names, their actions in creation, and their mutual relationships. Only the last of these can really provide us with a definition of personhood, since all the Persons of the Trinity partake in the actions of any other Person of the Trinity, and since personal names will not give us a definition of personhood. The mutual relationships of the Trinity are connected to the names of the Persons of the Trinity: The Father eternally begets the Son, who is begotten by the Father. The Spirit is eternally spirated by the Father and the Son, the Father and the Son eternally spirate the Spirit. What it means that the Son is eternally generated by the Father is not that the Son owes the Father for his being or existence (which the Persons share), but that his personhood and relation to the Father somehow originate in the Father. Similarly, what this means for the Spirit is not that he in any way depends on the Father and Son for existence or Being, but rather that his personhood is tied to the spiration of the Father and the Son. Conversely, the Father’s subsistence could not be understood except with his generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit. Now what this means for our definition of personhood is that it can only be defined in relation to other persons. A person is a subsistence identified by its relationship of origin to other persons. To have a person, there must be other persons.
Making applications from deep Trinitarian truth is a dicey matter. It’s harder for us to see how this definition of personhood matters for us as humans because we don’t share our beings or existences with other people. I am one being and I am one person. But the definition of personhood here runs counter to so much of how we think of personhood in popular–especially American–culture. We think of personhood as entailing our rights, our prerogatives. When we let other people make decisions, we say “He’s his own person; he can decide for himself.” But this is not fundamentally what a person is. Rather, our individual personhood is still defined by our relationships to other persons, most particularly relationships of origin. And ultimately all our origins lie in God.
A good definition of personhood reminds us that the the defining point of our identities is our relationship with the ultimate Persons, with our Creator. Our natures–including our likes and dislikes, our mental capacities, our will and inclinations–are not central to our identity as persons. Indeed, the Bible teaches that these can change! At salvation a person undergoes regeneration, which is a transformation of nature from one to another. How much more can lesser things like our preference for sandwiches to lack crusts change! But our personhood never changes, and our personal identity is linked to our relationship to God. The doctrine of personhood encourages us to pursue our ongoing relationship with God.
Resources
Help! You’re talking about the Trinity and I have no idea what’s going on.
Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Theology Proper
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2: God & Creation
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
James Dolezal, All That Is in God – Dolezal talks precisely about the definition of personhood used here.
Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (Caveat: Watson’s love for analogies makes some of this teaching unhelpful)
Hall of Shame: Resources Recommended Against
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology
Citizens & Sons 