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05 / 06
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Is Each Person of the Trinity a "Part"?

Dr. Craig discusses Divine Simplicity with Ryan Mullins and Cameron Bertuzzi.


QUESTION: How exactly are you defining “part” such that a component of the Trinity isn't a part?

DR. CRAIG: In my model of the Trinity I suggested that the persons of the Trinity are in some sense parts of God in that each person is not the whole of the Godhead. If you take the Son, there's also the Father and the Spirit. And so in some sense the person is not equal to the whole Trinity. He would be in some sense a part. But I've had some second thoughts about that in that I'm not so sure we should identify the Trinity as the substance that God is; rather, the Trinity is in a sense a group concept. It's a group. In that case the persons are not parts of the Trinity; they're members of the Trinity. The Trinity would be like, say, the Rotary and then people would be members of the Rotary Club, but they're not parts of the Rotary Club. So if we don't equate the Trinity with the substance that God is then I think we could avoid having to say that the persons are parts of God even though they are members of the Trinity.