Even before Creation, the "
threeness" of God means that there were relationships within the Godhead.
In the early church the presence of the one God was an accepted reality, the difficulty was in conceiving the "
threeness" of God.
The Yoruba people tell us, according to Babatunde Lawal, that, "
Threeness is to the initiate as twoness is to the uninitiated", signifying that a bond between two initiates of a sacred bond that has sworn an oath of secrecy, and most importantly, has jointly witnessed the invisible third party of the bonding transaction, is stronger than the bond between two friends.
Threeness and fiveness are abstractions that we appear to be comfortable with from a young age.
The Eastern Christian view underscores the "
threeness" of the divine, and in particularly, the relationality of the three.
Moltmann's assessment of Western Trinitarianism is questionable, but what his caricature communicates is the dangers which abound when stressing the oneness of God at the expense of God's
threeness and when prioritizing talk of divine substance over God's self-disclosure through the person and life of Jesus.
This choice of repeating patterns was deliberate, as it was important to see if the students could relate any of the patterns to their number facts; that is, see the
threeness, fourness or the fiveness of the pattern and use this to predict unseen elements.
However, if one reads Bakhtin's concept of intentional hybridity into this final state of Petra's development, we do find that the protagonist's personae seem to coalesce into a
threeness. This kind of resolution, however, runs the risk of congealing into another stable demarcation that may stop movement.
At the same time, in at least three of the great religions--Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity--there is a
threeness, a Trinity, in God.
Indeed, I would argue that it is the "
threeness" of the aforementioned polyphonic singing that makes this passage unique--and symbolizes the concord and harmony described by Ciabattoni--where the numbers one and three are reconciled in the Creator.
We can clarify this objection by recourse to Plato's own analogies of
threeness:odd::fire:heat::soul:living.
Instead, both oneness and
threeness are equally real, equally ultimate, equally basic, and integral to God's nature." Id.