Questions of “otherness”: How can God be one, yet three? How can the Word be God yet be with that God?
Ancient, medieval and modern theologians grappled with the problem of unity and otherness. How can God be one and also three? How can the Word be God, yet also be with God? Or, as the Jehovah's Witnesses put it, “As the Son of God, he could not be God himself” (Should You Believe, Chapter 6). Or, “God could not be his own son” (ibid., Chapter 7).
Once again, the prologue to John’s gospel sums up the issue as it exemplifies this apparent contradiction:
In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God.
(John 1:1 Green’s Literal Translation)
First, John 1:1 pertains to divine Persons of the immanent Trinity, not the created humanity of Jesus, who was not God. Furthermore, the ancients were aware of conceptual difficulties with respect to God being one yet three, but they also understood that if John 1:1 is to be taken at face value, then God must be “one” in one sense, and “three” in a different sense (Catholic Encyclopedia, 296). With time it became apparent that the conceptual obstacles were not insurmountable once it became clear that the answer lies not in comparisons to the material, vegetable or sensory worlds, but in the intellectual and psychological.
For instance, “Justin pictures the preexistent Word as the Father’s rational consciousness (1 Apol. 46; 2 Apol. 13), as emerging, therefore, from the interiority of the Godhead while never-the-less remaining inseparable from the Godhead” (Catholic Encyclopedia, 296).
Tertullian (d. 230 A.D.) displayed a good sense of the manner in which God is one, and the way in which he is at the same time three:
God is indeed three: in grade or order, in appearance or aspect, but with a realist connotation, and in manifestation; but in substance (granting an indecisiveness in Tertullian’s use of the term), in power, God is perfectly one. (ibid., 297)
The Word stands forth and is other than the Father though still within the Godhead in the manner suggested by human reflection, as internal discourse is in some sense another, a second in addition to oneself, though yet within oneself. (ibid., 296)
Irenaeus (d. 200 A.D.) saw the Son and Spirit’s roles as the two hands of the Father; and by the third century the three Persons were understood to be “distinct yet not divided, different yet not separate, and each with a particular yet complementary role to play in salvation” (Oxford, 1208).
Additionally, Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274 A.D.) elevated the psychological analogy to another level, drawing parallels with man’s understanding of self and the interior conceptualization of the intellect:
Men can and do think of their own minds; and when the human intellect reflects upon itself, understands itself, there comes forth within the intellect, in consequence of the act of understanding, the concept or interior conceptualization of the intellect itself so understood.
This, moreover, is the only type of generation or coming forth that is possible in the immaterial and infinite Godhead. As God understands Himself, there issues forth from God Understanding (the Father) God Understood (the Son).
In terms of this psychological analogy, then, the three Persons are both immanent to the undivided Godhead and yet distinct as Persons - as God understood in God Understanding, and as God Beloved (the Spirit, ch. 19) in God Loving (the Father and the Son as single source). (Catholic Encyclopedia, 303)
There are other ways to look at this. For example, you have a spirit within you; it is with you yet it is you. Or, in terms of one person being with another person, an individual with multiple personalities is one individual composed of multiple individuals in his mind, each of which is that person yet with him and each other. Or, Scripture states that husband and wife are one flesh, not two (Genesis 2:24), yet we accept this illogical unity on a spiritual, abstract level as perfectly acceptable.
Accordingly, the idea that the Word was God and was with God and that each of the three Persons of the Trinity dwell in each other is entirely within the realm of logical abstract possibilities. As a matter of fact it is perfectly reasonable. Bear in mind, we are dealing with spirit, and the immanent preincarnate Word at John 1:1, not the created humanity of Jesus.
Finally, the Word’s relation to the Godhead, in the sense of being “with” God does not mean “mere company, but the most intimate communion” (Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words Compilated and Expanded upon in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible [Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001], 152) (Strong and Vine’s). This intimacy of the Word with God is a product of their mutual indwelling, among other things, the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father (John 17:21 NAB). Furthermore, the Word (Logos) is the personal manifestation, “not of a part of the divine nature, but of the whole deity” (Strong and Vine’s, 152).