There are few things more entertaining than reading a Trinitarian try explain and defend the Trinity while acknowledging that this cannot actually be done.
Previously, I had a quote from Bishop Beverage which I will re-post below:
"We are to consider the order of those persons in the Trinity described in the words before us in Matthew 28:19. First the Father and then the Son and then the Holy Ghost; everyone one of which is truly God. This is a mystery which we are all bound to believe, but yet must exercise great care in how we speak of it, it being both easy and dangerous to err in expressing so great a truth as this is. If we think of it, how hard it is to imagine one numerically divine nature in more than one and the same divine person. Or three divine persons in no more than one and the same divine nature. If we speak of it, how hard it is to express it. If I say, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost be three, and everyone a distinct God, it is false. I may say, God the Father is one God and the Son is one God, and the Holy Ghost is one God, but I cannot say that the Father is one God and the Son is another God and the Holy Ghost is a third God. I may say that the Father begat another who is God; yet I cannot say that He begat another God. I may say that from the Father and Son proceeds another who is God; yet I cannot say that from the Father and Son proceeds another God. For though their nature be the same their persons are distinct; and though their persons be distinct, yet still their nature is the same. So that, though the Father be the first person in the Godhead, the Son the second and the Holy Ghost the third, yet the Father is not the first, the Son the second and the Holy Ghost a third God. So hard it is to word so great a mystery aright; or to fit so high a truth with expressions suitable and proper to it, without going one way or another from it." Bishop Beverage, Private Thoughts, Part 2, 48, 49, cited by Charles Morgridge, The True Believers Defence Against Charges Preferred by Trinitarians for Not Believing in the Deity of Christ (Boston: B. Greene, 1837), 16.
To this I will add Frederick Silver's words below:
"Q: Are the names, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, merely names of office?
A: There is no authority in Scripture for such an assumption. On the contrary, there is much to establish their personal identity. It is a true saying, that this is a mystery incomprehensible to us, and from its infinite nature must ever remain beyond the grasp of a creature's understanding; but its incomprehensibility is a strong argument in favor of its acceptation. If it were not incomprehensible, it could not be true; because JEHOVAH in his Trinity of Persons is infinite, eternal, immutable, and incomprehensible.
A finite creature may have a capacity to understand how some of the properties in nature, although closely connected, are really distinct things, such as light, heat, and matter; he may have a personal knowledge of the fact, and be able to prove experimentally that heat is not light, and that light is not matter; and he may even understand how these three distinct properties may unite in one, as in the sun. But he can never comprehend, much less explain, how JEHOVAH is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that these three are One: for if he could, Jehovah would not be infinite and incomprehensible. If Jehovah is not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, from everlasting to everlasting, He is not immutably and eternally the same! The Father cannot be before the Son, nor the Son after the Father. The relationship must be co-eval, for the Father could not be the ETERNAL FATHER without the ETERNAL Son, and the Son could not be the ETERNAL SON without the ETERNAL Father. Neither could I am, be that I AM, if the FATHER, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, were not eternally as such the One JEHOVAH.
It is our mercy to know, that He who is thus revealed, cannot be personally known as THREE eternal nondescript samenesses, defective in foresight; neither is He to be worshipped as such an heathenish deity, having eyes, but seeing not. And such would be the case, if the relative names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, were merely names of office, and if they did not see all things as existing, that they know shall exist. Indeed, it appears little short of blasphemy to believe, or even to suggest, that the HOLY Ghost, the INFALLIBLE AUTHOR of Holy Scripture, has given a chimerical revelation of the FATHER and the Son.
Is not the Holy Ghost revealed in Scripture as the SPIRIT of the FATHER; as the Spirit of the Son, as bearing witness of them as the Father, and as the Son? Is He then merely the Spirit of the name of an office? Has He ever said, God might have been God, and never have become a FATHER? Is He not rather the Spirit that searcheth all things, yea, the depths of God?-for so it reads in the original text. Is He not the Spirit of wisdom, and of REVELATION, and of Truth? Is the revelation which He hath made true, or imaginary?--and if true, is it not eternally true?"
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"We must recognize the fact that mankind cannot go on without a certain amount of absurdity, that absurdity is an element in its existence, and illusion indispensable; as indeed other aspects of life testify." --Schopenhauer
"I believe, because it is absurd." Attributed to Tertullian
Bishop Beverage? Is this serious?
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