only the Antichrist could deny, since the Word of both testaments calls him
the Son of Jehovah, the Son of God the Highest, and the only begotten
One. The Lord’s primary essential component, then, is the Father’s divinity,
like the soul in us. It follows that the Son whom Mary bore is the body of
that divine soul; for what develops in the mother’s womb is the body that
was conceived by and derived from the soul. This, then, is the second essen-
tial component. Actions make a third essential component because they
come from both the soul and the body; for things produced have the same
essence as the things that produce them.
The three essential components that are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
are one in the Lord as our soul, our body, and our actions [are one in us].
This is clear and obvious from the Lord’s statement that the Father and
he are one, and that the Father is in him and he is in the Father. The Lord
is also one with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is divinity radiat-
ing from the Lord on behalf of the Father, as I have fully shown from the
Word in §§ 153 and 154 above. To demonstrate this point again would
therefore be an extra serving—it would be burdening the table with food
after people are already full.168 When told that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the three
essential components of the one God as our soul, our body, and our
actions [are the essential components of a human being], the human
mind may still think that three persons play the roles of these three essen-
tial components, when in fact there could not be three separate persons.
When, however, we see the Father’s divinity as the soul, the Son’s divinity
as the body, and the Holy Spirit’s divinity (or divinity emanating) as
action, and we see them as three essential components of one single God,
then they become understandable. For the Father has his own divinity;
the Son derives his divinity from the Father; and the Holy Spirit derives
its divinity from them both. Since they share the same soul and essence,
they constitute one God.
If we called these three divine components persons, however, and
assigned each one its own responsibility—if we saw the Father as assigning
spiritual credit or blame, the Son as mediating, and the Holy Spirit as put-
ting things into effect—then we would be splitting a divine essence that is
actually unified and indivisible. We would have made none of the three
fully God; we would have given each one only a third of the power—an
arrangement that a sound intellect has no choice but to reject.
169 We are all capable of using the trinity within each of us to picture the
Trinity in the Lord. In every one of us there is a soul, a body, and our