What does it mean to count the Persons in a simple God?

Question #49: What does it mean to count the Persons in a simple God? (and how via SSGO)

In the Self-Standing Givenness Ontology (SSGO), “counting” the Divine Persons is neither a simple tally nor a fragmenting of the divine reality, but rather an acknowledgment of three distinct, irreducible ways the one undivided essence is fully lived. Put differently, the act of counting here is recognitional, not operational, strictly speaking, and as such it is theological rather than mathematical.

SSGO begins with the classical principle that God is absolutely simple, meaning no composition or division can be attributed to the divine being. At the same time, it affirms that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not mere modes in the sense of fleeting appearances, but actual, co-eternal “self-standing relational modes.” These modes are not additional properties layered onto an otherwise unitary God; they are instead how the essence itself exists in each Person. Thus, when we “count” to three, we do not say there are three separate entities bound together somehow; we are simply stating that there are three irreducible vantage-points on a single, infinite act of being.

From this perspective, “three” refers to the distinct relational stances–unbegotten for the Father, begotten for the Son, and proceeding for the Spirit–rather than enumerating portions of God or stacking up three incomplete pieces. Each Person fully is the one divine essence, even though the Father is not the Son, nor either one the Spirit. SSGO therefore guards against confusion that might arise if someone attempted to do standard arithmetic on the Trinity, as though we could literally line up three Gods and then propose a sum. Instead, it insists that every Person shares the identical infinite being, distinguished only by a relation of origin that cannot be swapped or merged. Here, “counting” is not about aggregating discrete units but about recognizing and naming the fact that the same divine life, by its very nature, exists in three non-interchangeable stances.

In this way, SSGO preserves God’s indivisible oneness–no partitioning of divine substance–while clarifying why there are exactly three Persons. The number “three” emerges from the irreducibility of these relational modes themselves; none is reducible to the others, yet all are co-inherent within the simple divine reality. Each Person lives the full reality of God in a uniquely relational manner, and those three relational manners are precisely how God is tri-personal from all eternity. Consequently, the logic of SSGO reinterprets counting so that it functions purely as an attestation of real personal difference within the single essence, freeing us from the usual notion that adding one Person to another yields a greater sum of gods.

What does it mean to count the Persons in a simple God? It means we name the irreducible tri-personal distinction within the one divine essence, rather than assembling finite parts. By reframing counting as recognizing three fully shared, self-standing expressions of the same infinite essence, SSGO upholds the bedrock affirmation of God’s unity without undermining the reality of three distinct Persons (see John 1:1–3; John 10:30; Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14).

A Quick Math Lesson by a Theologian

Mapping the SSGO notion of “counting” onto a mathematical field or a function in the usual sense would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, because the very categories at play–relational vantages within an indivisible reality–do not lend themselves to conventional algebraic axioms. A field, in the mathematical sense, presupposes entities that can be added or multiplied according to well-defined rules (commutativity, associativity, inverses, etc.). Such structures invariably treat their elements as discrete instances within that system. But in SSGO, the “elements” are not discrete at all; each Person is wholly the one divine reality, distinguished only by an irreducible relational stance.

Even if one tried to define a specialized “class distinct field” for recognizing three relational modes, the axioms used in fields (or, more broadly, in rings and groups) would not align well with SSGO’s core claim that nothing is being added, subtracted, or otherwise partitioned. One cannot systematically arrange the Father, Son, and Spirit as independent objects to be summed or multiplied without undercutting the premise of divine simplicity. The moment we try to adapt standard algebraic operations to a tri-personal framework of vantage, we reintroduce separability and countable units.

Indeed, this notion is fairly intuitive: beginning from an essence-based reasoning, the fundamental reality–namely, the nature that constitutes each Person–lies wholly beyond numerical frameworks, functioning as a class-distinct field unlike any familiar numeric system, so that imposing a numerical operation would reduce the Person’s being to something it was never meant to be. In simpler terms, the logic of typical mathematics presupposes that what is counted or operated on is partitionable, whereas in SSGO, the essence is indivisible, and each Person is that same essence in a unique mode of origin.

What we are left with is closer to an existential or theological recognition than a formalizable operation. In SSGO, “counting” is bound to the unique, irreducible way in which each Person is the same essence. It remains a relationally sufficient way of noting the tri-personal distinction, rather than a function repeated or iterated in a numeric sequence. In more abstract terms, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not “three successors” in a series but rather three co-eternal stances–irreducible to each other–within a single, indivisible act of being.

Thus, the form of knowing we engage here is fundamentally theological, not mathematical. It hinges on a phenomenological apprehension of divine revelation, where the reality discloses its own essence and identity, and the truth-conditions for grasping it lie within a theological framework–communicated and verified on that basis. This is why what we do is less an “operation” and more a “recognition.” Because the knowledge attained is truly theological, its criteria of satisfaction are not abstract or numerical but anchored in the logic and content of faith. Hence, while in principle one could devise symbolic representations of these relational differences, those representations would remain metaphorical rather than genuinely mathematical, because the essence of “three Persons in one essence” is not an arithmetically definable phenomenon.

This act of counting may disappoint a mathematician, yet it remains both powerful and truthful. Crucially, it is a positive kind of counting, though “positive” here does not mean adding discrete units; rather, it means affirming the real, irreducible distinction of each Person. In other words, we do not arrive at “three” by breaking down the single divine essence–no partitioning or negating is involved. We positively recognize three irreducible ways that same essence is possessed. Such “recognitional counting” is an active, affirmative acknowledgment that the indivisible divine being is “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit,” each fully and co-eternally.

Returning to the Properly Theological

What we have here in the Simple God is first a recognition. This is a recognition of the unbegotten, begotten, and proceeding. This recognition is a counting without sum: Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity. Finally, it is an eschatological recognition. The tri-personal, or the three three, are not numerically added, it also endures forever, shaping the eschatological consummation where “God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). For more:

Gal 3:20

1 Cor 8:6

Phil 2:6

Col 1:15–20

Rom 8:9–11

1 Cor 12:12–30

1 Cor 12:4–11

1 Cor 12:13

1 Cor 12:4–6

Rom 15:6

2 Cor 1:3

Rom 1:7

1 Cor 1:3

Rom 8:14

Eph 4:4–6

1 Cor 15:24–28

Eph 1:9–10

Eph 1:10

1 Cor 15:28