[quote=bookslover;282886]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Civbert 
No, this is not correct. God is three Persons, and all three Persons are completely and fully God. Each of the Persons is not a "part" of God. Each one is God. God is one being, and three Persons.
Each Person is distinct from the others, and yet all three Persons have the same essence as the one God. The doctrine known by the fancy name of perichoresis teaches this: that all three Persons have the same essence as God.
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I know the terminology. One essence. But the essence is spiritual - therefore the essence is not divisible into parts. But the persons are unique. And each is required. You can not have Jesus is as just God alone, he is God the Son and he is begotten of the Father. You can not call Jesus God apart from the relationship he has to the Father and the Holy Spirit. Just as you can not call a single molecule of H2O a solid or a gas or a liquid, because those are not simple states of existence, but relationships to other molecules. If you subtract out the Father, or the Holy Spirit, and leave Jesus you have removed any sense to the meaning of to Jesus is God. But Jesus is not the Father, and not the Spirit. He is one in substance with the Father and Spirit.
The term "being" is also vague and alone has little meaning. A being is nothing without something that tells us what it is. God is one being in the sense of one spiritual substance that is unique to the Godhead, and not shared by man. The Godhead is not one being in the sense of one person. God
the Father is one person, Jesus is another person, and the Spirit another.