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Person
'Person', the word, is common enough and no particular highlight is attached to it. It does have a most particular meaning in Catholic doctrine with regard to God, however.
We are advised that there are three Persons in the one Godhead - The Father, The Son and The Spirit. This is, of course, clearly perceived in the Bible in both the New and the Old Testament.
The Old Testament does not give the same detail, although plurality is clear in, for example, let us make man wearing our own image and likeness. (Genesis 1:26)
(As we shall see, when God said these words, it was not symbolic but precise reality.)
Because God is absolute and total and perfect in all that He is and does,
His Virtues or His Characteristics
are what He is.
So, as Christianity is aware, God is Love. If we reverse that to Love is God, we are able to better grasp the full meaning of that monumental phrase. The magnificence and fullness of meaning in those words are looked at in the chapter 'The Balance'.
We are also aware that God is Existence; that He is Truth. Again, these words are not symbolic; they are pure reality in the full sense of that word.
That is, Truth is God; Perfect-existence is God!
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity. He is the Word was made flesh. (John 1:14)
Christ is The Truth. (1John 5:6)
If you know Me, you know My Father, He says in John 8:19.
The Father is the first Person of the Trinity.
Christ directed us to pray 'Our Father . . .', and, Himself, referred to 'My Father'.
The Spirit is the third Person; He who filled the first Christians with zeal and opened their eyes to the truths of God: He who has opened our eyes to the Truth that is Christ, ever since.
Our Limitations
When you and I consider a thing, we see it in part, only. If we ponder on a tree, we realise it has colourings, that it has bark, sap, roots etc., yet there is much more to the tree than what we perceive:- the molecules in its make-up, its history from creation; the individuality of each, how it uses sunlight, etc.
We do not see a tree in its ABSOLUTE FULLNESS.
God has no such limitations. God sees a tree in perfect fullness. Every basic fabric, every minute detail without exception, He has perfect knowledge of.
We are taught that within The Godhead, The Father, in His absolute and perfect knowledge of Himself,
causes the Person of the Son.
That is to say, the Son is the Father-knowing Himself. Hence the Second Person is known as the 'Son' or the 'Word', as being from, issuing out of, The Father.
The Son issues from the Father.
Such is the absoluteness of the Fathers' knowing-himself - that the second Person results: the Word, the Son.
The two Persons, Father and Son, loving, causes the third, the Spirit.
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