The Romans had a propensity to affix different deities to an object, so that, as pertaining to the moon mentioned below three separate persons—Diana, Ceres, Luna—are invoked for the one object. Arnobius argues: that being the case, then two of the persons are completely unnecessary thus ruining the argument the pagan is attempting to make.
In the same manner, this logic can be addressed to adherents of modalism: that God is one but shows himself in any of three personalities as the situation requires. One can argue against it that if there is only one person in the Godhead, then the manifestations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are man-made constructs devoid of any meaning.
Some of your learned men—men, too, who do not chatter merely because their humor leads them—maintain that Diana, Ceres, Luna, are but one deity in triple union and that there are not three distinct persons, as there are three different names; that in all these Luna is invoked, and that the others are a series of surnames added to her name. But if this is sure, if this is certain, and the facts of the case show it to be so, again is Ceres but an empty name, and Diana: and thus the discussion is brought to this issue, that you lead and advise us to believe that she whom you maintain to be the discoverer of the earth’s fruits has no existence, and Apollo is robbed of his sister, whom once the horned hunter1 gazed upon as she washed her limbs from impurity in a pool, and paid the penalty of his curiosity.
1 Actaeon.
In the same manner, this logic can be addressed to adherents of modalism: that God is one but shows himself in any of three personalities as the situation requires. One can argue against it that if there is only one person in the Godhead, then the manifestations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are man-made constructs devoid of any meaning.
Some of your learned men—men, too, who do not chatter merely because their humor leads them—maintain that Diana, Ceres, Luna, are but one deity in triple union and that there are not three distinct persons, as there are three different names; that in all these Luna is invoked, and that the others are a series of surnames added to her name. But if this is sure, if this is certain, and the facts of the case show it to be so, again is Ceres but an empty name, and Diana: and thus the discussion is brought to this issue, that you lead and advise us to believe that she whom you maintain to be the discoverer of the earth’s fruits has no existence, and Apollo is robbed of his sister, whom once the horned hunter1 gazed upon as she washed her limbs from impurity in a pool, and paid the penalty of his curiosity.
Arnobius of Sicca, The Case against the Pagans, Book III, cap. 34
1 Actaeon.
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