..... every time Tertullian uses paraclete he is thinking of charis-mania.
May be Tertullian
was under a mental delusion that he was speaking the very thoughts of the Holy Spirit, like Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla.
Tertullian was by no means the first religious philosopher (he being proceded by the likes of Melito and Sabellius etc). I suppose in one sense, he can be credited with putting in a very necessary check on the Sabellian tendency, which had in going one step further than Melito, essentially replaced the Father by the Son as the only true God. Thus also, many modern Sabellians see Jesus as God, either to the exclusion of the Father, or else with only token acknowledgement of the Father's separate existence: cf. Melito in
Pascha, who has but one reference to Jesus sitting at the Father's right hand at the very end of a lengthy and seemingly lopsided discourse extolling Christ as "wearing the Father" and as if the
only true God. Clearly this doesn't reflect apostolic discourse: Jesus says that the Father is the only "true God" in John 17:3 and this is how the apostles also denote the Father.
Yet in another sense, Tertullian went badly astray in lacking the temerity to attack the introduction of "Trinitarian" novelties into theological discourse, which, if it emerged into the open at Nicea with the "homoousios," had long been making inroads into theological discourse amongst the ECFs with the misapplication of terms such as "God" and "begotten" to disparate heavenly entities in order to align Greek religion with Hebrew religion.
The only allowable religious philosophy is that akin to John & Paul, in 1 John and Hebrews, neither of whom use novelties like "substance" - "hypostasis" & "logos" being the limit of the philosophical terms; where "God" (akin to YHWH) remains a term reserved to the Father alone in their NT diction.
Your answer looks fine, in terms of prospons/personas, putting aside using Bill Mounce and your speculations.
I think Bill Mounce has a valid point, as prosopon is being used to refer to indivduals in 2 Cor. 1:11.
You seem to agree with my point that modern translations that simply translate personae as persons are essentially translating to doctrine.
The word "person" carries the inference of autonomy by reason of a distinct mental facility and independent power over will. That is hardly contestable of the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and in one sense does justice to the biblical revelation. However as you suggest there is a doctrinal baggage attached to "person" which lies in the unavoidable anthropomorphism of the divine, and in the implication of a polytheist strand, and hence the necessity to restrain it. However it may be better just to acknowledge that "person" is only of limited application to the divine, as entailing unavoidable anthropomorphism.
The doctrinal issues start with how the votaries of three "divine persons" avoid polytheism. "The Three are One [something]" (per Tertullian and the Comma) is the usual source of reliance. "Something" then becomes subject to doctrinal definition. In practice it is seen to extend to "God", and/or "substance", and / or "person" (in the case of Sabellians). Yet each such definition of "something" causes problems.
If the Comma (& Tertullian) be discounted, "the Three are One [something]" is seen to be foreign to scripture. We only have "the three are in agreement" in 1 John 5:8. Deut 6:4 never mentions the "three." Going back to the language of Comma-less scripture may be the only answer.
