re major views of the trinity in article may athos rutgers edu you write i fear orthodox theologians have been overly in love with paradox to the extent that well meaning people think they ve just flat out confused there s no problem with things being both and e g if the are different parts of the but they re in some way different aspects modes or whatever of one god if you accept economic trinitarianism it s possible that you don t have any substantive difference with the standard view is it possible that you just don t find the neo platonic explanation illuminating clh i would put it stronger than that i consider it nonsense simply put i do not see any way that a platonic essence could have any real existance essence in the platonic sense does not have any referent as far as i can tell it is just an imaginary concept invented to provide an explanation for things better explained in other ways so to attribute an essence to god is to attribute to him something that does not exist thus the orthodox platonic formulation seems to leave the unity of god in limbo since it is based on a non existant essence thus failing to avoid the very problem it was supposed to address thus to me the unity of god must be primary and the triality must be secondary must be modal or aspectual relating to roles or to modes of interaction since otherwise there is no meaning to saying god is one sarima teradata com formerly tdatirv sarima or stanley friesen elsegundoca ncr com i think one can read augustine as saying something consistent with your comments his de trinitate which has been very influential in the west defines the distinction among the persons relationally you re probably at one extreme of orthodox views but i m not sure your views are necessary incompatible with the trinity clh
