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divine persons.
Reply Obj. 1: This argument is founded on a real community.
Reply Obj. 2: Although person is incommunicable, yet the mode itself of incommunicable existence can be common to many.
Reply Obj. 3: Although this community is logical and not real, yet it does not follow that in God there is universal or particular, or genus, or species; both because neither in human affairs is the community of person the same as community of genus or species; and because the divine persons have one being; whereas genus and species and every other universal are predicated of many which differ in being.
QUESTION 31
OF WHAT BELONGS TO THE UNITY OR PLURALITY IN GOD (In Four Articles)
We now consider what belongs to the unity or plurality in God; which gives rise to four points of inquiry:
(1) Concerning the word "Trinity";
(2) Whether we can say that the Son is other than the Father?
(3) Whether an exclusive term, which seems to exclude otherness, can be joined to an essential name in God?
(4) Whether it can be joined to a personal term?
FIRST ARTICLE [I, Q. 31, Art. 1]
Whether There Is Trinity in God?
Objection 1: It would seem there is not trinity in God. For every name in God signifies substance or relation. But this name "Trinity" does not signify the substance; otherwise it would be predicated of each one of the persons: nor does it signify relation; for it does not express a name that refers to another. Therefore the word "Trinity" is not to be applied to God.
Obj. 2: Further, this word "trinity" is a collective term, since it