Jimmy Stephens:

Van Til means that God is exhaustively personal. God has personality or personhood in a way that is self-contained. By comparison, I’m unipersonal in my personhood where God is tripersonal, remembering that I’m an analogical reflection of God’s original.

“Exhaustively” personal is to do with God’s self-contained personhood. Where human persons need God and other humans to exist and survive, to be persons, God is a person all in Himself. His personhood is complete by Himself, apart from considering anything else.

I can be unipersonal because I’m a finite creature that reflects God’s original infinite personhood. God is Triune because without Trinity, God would be incomplete, and so would depend on things outside Himself.

This rules out a lot of problematic views of the Godhead. About God’s unity, it means God’s unity is not impersonal. God is not a substance with three “heads” or a set of properties instantiated by three people. The divine essence is not a thing.

Van Til calls God a “person” (singular) to emphasize that even in His unity, God is not impersonal. God’s unity presupposes His Triune personhood.

There’s sometimes a mistake of misreading Van Til as a modalist or quadrinitarian. It’s easy for some to misunderstand him as saying God’s unity is, in effect, a fourth person or a primary person with three outlets of some kind. That’s not what he had in mind.

Van Til isn’t using the word “person” of God’s unity as interchangeable with Member (of the Trinity). He’s generalizing God’s Triunity. He’s associating God with the class of things persons, agents, etc.

I think the senses are something like a Person proper and indiscriminate personality.

The former is to refer to God qua Father or Son or Spirit or to refer to Father, Son, or Spirit – one of the Members.

The latter is to refer to God without distinguishing a Member on the presupposition that One or a combination is in view.

Recommend:

Triablogue:

Van Til’s Serious Trinitarian Theology