"The divinity is jointly a sole perfection, and many perfections diverse, one in simplicity, and many in valor and eminence."--Fray Luis de León, The Perfect Wife §I
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one!" So declares the Shema of Deuteronomy, and so declares the Church: and yet we also declare that God is Three. Not only does the Divinity have three Persons, but God manifests Himself to us in a multitude of ways. These three Persons show themselves to us in many, many ways. (They are not themselves merely manifestations of the Divinity, for this was the ancient heresy of Modalism.) One tradition speaks of the different "books" by which one encounters God: first is the book of Scripture, of course, but there is also the book of nature, and the book of experience, among others. We learn of God through prayer, through the liturgy, through contemplation, through study. Yet it is always the one God we learn of, the One Who Is, the One above being, above all that we can know of Him, even beyond our conception of God: as Dionysius said, He is "hyper-God" (ὑπέρθεος).
