18 GOD AS TRIUNE

that you mean that it exists as a hand after being severed from the body. It is only by a very partial abstraction you can do this, namely, by arbitrarily selecting some features which inhere in 'hand' and arbitrarily overlooking other equally or more important ones.

We repeat, therefore, you can divide the material of an organism, but you cannot divide the organism, the unity-in-difference. You can but prematurely effect its dissolution and destruction. It, in fact, would be indivisible in all senses of the word were it immaterial; as it is, it is ideally indivisible; only, its material substance can be divided.

But God has no material substance. Therefore He is, in every sense, both ideally and really indivisible.

An earthly organism, then, can only exist in the fulness of its nature or be destroyed—there is no third possibility such as division. God cannot be destroyed; therefore He exists only in the undivided and indivisible fulness of His nature—that is, in His Unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

And just as we saw that, ideally speaking, a member is quite different from a part, since it can only be itself when abiding in the unity, so, both ideally, and really, Father, Son, and Spirit are in no sense whatever parts (God forbid!); but are eternally and truly interrelated, mutually-involving Members in an indestructible and indivisible Unity. And this does not say one word against the reality of the distinguishability of each. On the contrary that reality is absolutely involved in what I have

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said; and at the same time, instead of destroying, it constitutes the perfect Oneness of God; not a barren Monad, but a rich and perfect Unity. To whom glory for ever and ever.

To sum up: the Godhead has no parts, though It has Members; it is, therefore, unable to be parted. It it indivisible.

iv. That the Idea of the Trinity is Tritheism Necessarily

There is a fourth objection to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity one to which defenders of that doctrine sometimes expose themselves if they are not careful, namely, that the doctrine reduces the Godhead to the category of a genus (or species)1 made up of three individuals, and is therefore naked Tritheism (God forbid!).

But a clearer thought-analysis will reveal the fallaciousness of the objection. Let us see, what the objection amounts to. A genus or a species is, of course, a universal that includes a large number of particulars that fall under it. Man is a species, and Amr, Zaid, and Ubaid, etc., are individual men falling under it. If then Godhead is to be considered a genus, then the Unity is reduced to the formal unity of a genus, and the three members included in it are no less three gods, than Amr, Zaid, 'and Ubaid are three men.


1 The two expressions have, of course, only a relative difference, and it is difficult to say which should be used in stating the objection here.